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The Wonderful Story 
of 

JOAN OF ARC 




JUAN OF ARC (1412-1431) 
Sculpture by Chapu in Luxemburg 



The Wonderful Story of 

JOAN of ARC 

AND THE MEANING OF HER LIFE 
FOR AMERICANS 



By cm. STEVENS 

Author of "Washington," "Lincoln,' 
"Bible Stories," etc. 



'Foe only to the great blood-guilty oneSt 
The Masters and Murderers of Mankind.' 

— SOUTHEY. 



NEW YORK 
CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY 






Copyright, 1918, by 
CuppLES AND Leon Company 



JUN -1 1918 
©GU4R9220 



4 ^' 



^%vs I 



From the 

INSPIRATION AND FAITH 

of the 

WONDERFUL WOMAN 

to 

MY DAUGHTER 

and to 
ALL THE DAUGHTERS OP MAN AND GOD 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTEE PAGE 

I. Introductoey Interests 1 

II. Origins for a Wonderful Faith ... 28 

III. Early Interests in the Great Cause . 42 

IV. The First Believers and Their Task . 55 

V. The Promised Sign from the King of 

Heaven 76 

VI. Freedom to the City of Orleans ... 94 

VII. The Peace of a Pacifist King .... 114 

VIII. A Divine Crown and the Royal Head . 133 

IX. On the Way to Paris 154 

X. The Victory of Evil Minds 174 

XI. How Self-interest Decides Questions 

OF Right and Wrong 193 

XII. "The Tender Mercies of the Wicked 

Are Cruel" . 214 

XIII. Glimpses of the Inquisition .... 235 

vii 



viii CONTENTS 



CHAPTER PAGE 

XIV. The Might of Right for the Soul . . 257 

XV. Paying Unto "Will the Final Price op 

Faith 276 

XVI. The Tragedy of Faith and the Victory 

of "Will . 298 

XVII. Concluding Valuations of a Life . . 317 



/ 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

Joan of Arc (1412-1431), Sculpture by Chapu in 

Luxemburg Frontispiece "^ 

Birthplace of Joan of Arc ........ 32 

"Thou Art THE King" 70 

The Entrance of Jeanne D 'Arc into Orleans . 88 

Charles VII (1403-1461) 120 v 

Charles VII and the Maid of Orleans Enter- 
ing Rheims 144 

La Pucelle Listening to Her Voices . . . . 168 

Jeanne in Prison 200 ' 

Pierre Cauchon, the prosecutor in the trial 

against Joan of Arc 248 ' 

Joan of Arc with the Swori> of Fierbois . . . 272 

* ' The Last Full Measure of Devotion "... 300 "- 

Statue of Joan of Arc, Riverside Drive, New 

York 328 . 

ix. 



JOAN OF ARC 

AND 

THE MEANING OF HER LIFE FOR 
AMERICANS 



CHAPTER I 
INTRODUCTORY INTERESTS 

1. At the Gates of Mystery 

Joan of Abo was the first great warrior for the 
freedom of nations. She was the first leader of 
armies to make war solely against war. She was 
the first woman to demonstrate, from the lowliest 
scenes to the highest, ever within the qualities and 
capabilities of moral womanhood, all the heroism, 
endurance, and nobility ever known or claimed 
for manhood. She was the first martyr, unmis- 
takable, irreproachable and unsurpassable, within 
the Christian Church, for freedom of conscience, 
in the conduct of life, wherever it involves the 
rights of man in his responsibility to God. She 
was human motherhood in action for the pro- 
tection of her loved ones, empowered with the 
gospel of righteousness that wrong can be mas- 

1 



JOAN OF ARC 



tered by righto Like the three years ' ministry of 
the Wonderful Man, fourteen centuries before, the 
three years of this wonderful woman unveiled, as 
a Providential revelation and warning to coming 
generations, the monstrous despotism toward 
which the human will develops in the organized 
masteries of man. 

Joan of Arc is one of the supreme revelations 
of humanity. She is a sublime masterpiece of 
character. She gave a wonderful life for social 
justice. She lived an unsurpassable ideal of loy- 
alty to moral law. This shepherd girl of the lowly 
fields opened a book of faith that had been closed 
for a thousand years. She illuminated the sacred 
pages of divine rights so clearly that they can be 
read with unfailing hope for every one unto the 
end of time. Her banner of light waved away for- 
ever the despair of the oppressed, demonstrated 
the might of right, and revealed the right-minded 
as being endowed with the commonwealth of the 
universe. 

She knew in whom she believed. Spirit and 
work bore witness to her truth. She believed in 
the irresistible righteousness of an ever-present 
God. In her faith, ' ' whosoever will ' ' might freely 
come into that assurance and safety. She believed 
that righteous people were empowered with an al- 
mighty divinity working through their work as 
they strove for the peace and justice of lawful 
government, known then in moral understanding 
as the calling and office of a consecrated king. 



INTRODUCTORY INTERESTS 3 

She did not know of any organized evil but the 
merciless conqueror and his ruthless conquest of 
her helpless people. She did not know that be- 
tween her and the divine calling of the royal 
throne there was a Satanic brood of favorites, 
parasites and traitors controlling the royal office, 
who hated her light and were treasonable toward 
the great pity she had for France. She did not 
know that when she had won her heroic way 
through these dark forces of evil, or that after 
she had driven back the foreign foe from their in- 
tervening strongholds, and had completed her task 
in the holy consecration of her king to his sacred 
work for her native land, that she would then have 
to meet in a fight unto death a far more powerful 
organization of Satanic mercenaries, who had 
taken possession of her religious life, and had 
seized the right of way to the love of her saints 
and the law of her Lord. 

The sublime figure of this wonderful woman is 
the revelation of power in a child's faith glorified 
and exalted in the divine light of an infinite mean- 
ing for humanity. The supreme interest of her 
life is in the great victory promised her when the 
hideous despotism of so-called divine rights had 
done its worst. The Son of Man became a celes- 
tial ideal in contrast with Judas, the Jewish San- 
hedrim and the Roman Csesar, but it remained 
for the will of the Christian Church and State to 
place itself in a far more hideous contrast with 
the faith of this Daughter of God. 



JOAN OF ARC 



The heroic inspiration, and its meaning, of her 
sublime sacrifice is now dawning npon humanity 
through five centuries of soul-enshrouded night. 
The world of wonders, known as history, is be- 
coming sunlit with intelligence, and slowly we are 
finding many of its sacred relics to be abominable 
evils, and even more of its neglected forms to be 
the noblest good. Political freedom is only begin- 
ning to realize itself as moral law. Human mar- 
tyrdom and sacrifice have paid infinite prices to 
make free, and to help us understand, the divine 
rights composing the evolutionary meaning of the 
human race. The human mind is slowly and 
surely understanding the social way, and when 
it does there will be for every one the peace and 
safety of a moral commonwealth composing new 
heavens and a new earth. 

3. The Will-Made Life m a Faith-Made World 

The anguish and despair of conflicting conduct 
arise from the inhuman struggle between faith 
and will. The epic struggle of this wonderful 
woman was between her immediate faith in the 
might of right and the authorized will developed 
in the right of might. The ancient struggle for 
human rights develops as intelligence discovers 
and seeks to use the freedom and power of moral 
law. The chaos of selfish animalism disappears 
from the cosmic order of humanity as the indi- 
vidual will gives way to social reason in a com- 



INTRODUCTORY INTERESTS 5 

munity of moral law. The creation of the heav- 
ens and the earth has progressed in the order of 
an infinite system, every particle having its free- 
dom and its life in the universal work, but the cre- 
ation of humanity and personality, however pro- 
gressive its intelligence, continues in anguish and 
despair, and the tragedy that tore the battlefields 
of yesterday, even as ever before, is the same 
Satanic interest that begins its contest for mas- 
tery anew, over and over again, in every new 
community and at the birth of every child. 

Has intelligence discovered in such conse- 
quences that the entire system is totally wrong? 
It has. And it has always clearly known this. 
Otherwise, it could not be defined as intelligent. 
But the animal system of wills cannot yield its 
selfish control, and so, has tried to satisfy intelli- 
gence and keep it absorbed in constructing an in- 
volved, and ever more involved, and complicated 
system of contract-government, with individual 
mastery as the central sun or constellation of a 
will-made universe. It can^t be done. It is always 
falling to pieces or reforming itself in revolutions 
and wars. The endless struggle of Will against 
Faith has been totally illustrated in every life of 
faith which Will has found it necessary to sup- 
press or destroy in order to preserve its mastery 
and conquest. The mark of Cain is on the brow of 
every invading will, whether its imperialism is 
of persons, doctrines, capitalism or dynasties. 

In the fullness of time, for every epoch in the 



6 JOAN OF ARC 

development of humaiiity from its animal system, 
there has come forth an embodiment of Sovereign 
Faith in conflict unto death with the organization 
of Sovereign Will. Sovereign Might in the al- 
leged divine right of self-preservation forthwith 
killed its enemy and thus exalted in all reason the 
infinitely greater soul-ideal of Sovereign Law. 

In the first supreme epoch of human history, 
when the human will had reached its most com- 
plete mastery in the name of organized law, ever 
possible on earth, and all civilization was hope- 
lessly enslaved in the name of Eome and Caesar, 
there appeared a Man with the only possible 
means of defense or defeat for that monstrous 
process of inhumanity and moral chaos. He came 
from the origin of Life, with all the meaning of 
**Life More Abundantly," as possible only in 
Faith. It was One against all the powers of or- 
ganized might. He fought a sublime fight, but 
they killed him, and there was "lifted up" a Won- 
drous Light that was **to light the way of every 
one that cometh into the world." 

Selfishness, always seizing every means for any 
control over the minds of men, built up religions 
and dynasties out of that interest in Divine Life, 
in which revolution or conquest meant only a 
change of masters. Europe had its starless night 
known as the dark ages. For a thousand years 
the people lived, believed and died according to 
the will that had fought or intrigued its way to 
mastery over their group. Europe was an uu'^ 



INTRODUCTORY INTERESTS 7 

ceasing battlefield of dynastic wills. France was 
almost destroyed in a hundred years' war. The 
supreme organization of will in the time of Christ, 
known as Eome, had degenerated during fourteen 
hundred years into the most sordid and debauched 
condition recorded in human history. If there 
was faith anywhere on earth its light was put out 
in blood and death. God seemed to have aban- 
doned the world, when there appeared in the fields 
of Domremy a little girl with a vision and a task. 
It was the coming of a Woman with the only pos- 
sible means of defense or defeat for that mon- 
strous process of inhumanity and moral chaos. 
She came from the origin of Life, with all the 
meaning of faith in the ''Life More Abundantly," 
which fourteen centuries before had been revealed 
to the world. 

Joan of Arc was a revelation of Faith. Her 
enemies were a revelation of Will. Faith and 
Will are antagonists in the limited regions of in- 
dividuals and are one only as they coalesce in the 
infinite regions of the divine system of minds that 
we may call the social universe. Her faith-trium- 
phant in unsurpassable struggle with their will- 
militant is a revelation of the Power of Faith over 
the Power of Will. Humanity witnesses in this 
wonderful Woman the divine secret of human life. 
The Will-made world belongs to the age of beasts. 
Intelligence and reason and^ morality and love 
have no meaning except in a faith-made world. 

However much of a religious interest this may 



8 JOAN OF ARC 

be, and however much it may be a version of relig- 
ious principles, it is no less a personal reality, and 
there is revealed in this simple peasant girPs ex- 
perience a psychological power ever available for 
individual and social government. The Kingdom 
of Faith was a fundamental order in her soul, 
even as her enemies moved and lived and had 
their beings in a Kingdom of Will. Her career 
was a divine tragedy, revealing the struggle of hu- 
manity between the two kingdoms of human in- 
telligence. It was a final demonstration reveal- 
ing the perilous inferiority of will as a practical 
means in human affairs. 

The Domremy shepherd girl, who delivered 
France and suffered martyrdom at Rouen, reveals 
with more than mathematical conviction how the 
world's work is achieved through faith and is lost 
through will. Her career is not a dogmatic as- 
sertion to be defended or denied, except as a 
match game on the chess-board of controversy be- 
tween historical critics and religious logicians. 
There is a life of her that is simple and clear and 
that is consistently free of any mystic or partisan 
controversy. She surpasses wonder, when viewed 
as a child of faith, and yet no one in history is 
more sincere, reasonable and natural in her career 
and character. She separates with unavoidable 
distinction the kingdom of imperishable value 
from the kingdom of temporary mastery. She is 
an indisputable definition of the human way. She 
is an explanation of human history. Her experi- 



INTRODUCTORY INTERESTS 9 

ence is a living panorama of the two vital forces 
contending for the control of life and mind. She 
is, in the beginning, a supreme symbol of inspired 
womanhood defending her family group from the 
invading beasts of conquest, and then, from this 
great task, she becomes the sublime revelation 
of childhood-faith in an unconquerable death- 
struggle against wills and organized wills, as the 
religious and moral betrayers of the world. 

3. Before the Doors of Life 

The Maid of Orleans is a message and a way. 
She is a masterpiece of evidence in faith-keeping, 
and its independent power over the most resource- 
ful wit and disciplined purpose possible to man. 
In maintaining the faith for a sublime human 
cause, considering her youth, inexperience, and 
lack of learning, she becomes the most illustrious 
and heroic figure in human history. 

The growth of interest in that immortal child 
of lowly France develops according as we appre- 
ciate her possession of power that she proved to 
be unassailable in the midst of inescapable despot- 
ism. She was not a supernatural miracle of will 
but a natural result of simple faith in the might 
of right empowering the work of right-minded 
men. It could not have been a thought-out pur- 
pose, as she never knew or planned beyond the 
day or the task. She did only as every one must, 
do who desires to be worthy of being human on 



10 JOAN OF ARC 

the way to the divine. She gave her personal life 
to the meaning of social life and her social reason 
to the soul of moral law. 

Her intelligence was not given to anything so 
frail as human intelligence and she had no thought 
of ever trying to strengthen her will with human 
will. Her intelligence sought wisdom for every 
need in the Infinite Reason and her will found 
strength for every trial in the Infinite Law. Her 
will was often broken and defeated by other wills. 
Her persistence was never consistent as being res- 
olution or determination. She often o-ried like a 
child at deception, insults, suffering and cruelty. 
She trembled with fear under the menace of im- 
pending wrong. Her career, considered as the 
will of a woman, was ingloriously betrayed, and 
was brought to the most ignoble defeat, but the 
faith of the unlettered peasant girl could not be 
shaken or lessened by all the prolonged torture, 
treacherous reason, and exalted authority, possi- 
ble in the will of the most learned and powerful 
men in Europe. 

The child of faith won an unsurpassable victory 
over the will of men. Nothing less than the eter- 
nal meaning creative in our humanity, and al- 
mighty in our commonwealth of life, could have 
brought forth such a star of light for the soul 
of people enslaved and despoiled as they had been 
for centuries under the parasite system of organ- 
ized masteries. 

Appreciation cannot be exaggerated nor valua- 



INTRODUCTORY INTERESTS 11 

tion overprized for this illuminating contrast be- 
tween faith and will, because, as has already been 
truly said, *^ nothing could have been put into the 
story to make it more human or more divine." 
The will-maker has power unto the reach of his 
hands, but the faith-lover has the will of the wise 
man as the way of an organized universe. 

La Pucelle is an inexhaustible source of personal 
reassurance. The power that sustained her can 
sustain any other in any conditions, because no 
one could be placed under worse despotism or 
more hopeless despair. None can ever be sur- 
rounded by blacker forms of a more desperate 
destiny. If there is some weary soul, defeated 
and alone, imprisoned within a dungeon of suf- 
fering and evil, the memory of this unconquerable 
girl will bring the companionship of unlimited 
power over pain and death. A vision of her light 
should enable any one to seize fast hold, as she 
did, on the sources of invincible soul and be aS 
strong as she was strong. In the desponding hour 
of souls besieged, there shall come at the call of 
faith a vision of this dauntless life ; on the horizon 
of hope there shall appear the light of never-fail- 
ing inspiration, and in the name of love there 
shall be a healing response for every need. Out 
of the night of a brutal age, behold her flaming 
standard coming swiftly with the sunrise of a new 
day. In its shining folds is victory over hate and 
despair, almighty in the faith and meaning of hu- 
manity and God. It cannot fail for any one who 



12 JOAN OF ARC 

remembers how this young girl was a child of 
light in the midst of the darkest wrongs, in all the 
historical infamy of man. 

The simple revelations of her loyalty and sacri- 
fice for the rights of life become more appreciated, 
as a precious human inspiration, when we can re- 
ceive them free from the bewildering confusions 
of testimonies and records concerning voices, vi- 
sions and supernatural claims. Her own un- 
learned explanations of her intense convictions, 
whether subjective or objective, whether halluci- 
native or miraculous, are not needed to feel her 
inspiration or to believe in her faith and truth. 
From the day in which she made her first effort 
to fulfill her faith, she was subjected by enemies 
and friends to soul-torturing inquisitions, requir- 
ing explanations more than she could explain, but 
necessary for such understandings, then prevail- 
ing in the midst of the most superstitious of all 
ignorant times. Historical consistency cannot be 
recovered from the controversial confusions, con- 
sidering the many varieties of interest and mas- 
ters. She was faith. That is all and enough. 
Her character and career were faith in her Lord, 
the King of Heaven and Earth, a supreme ideal 
of mind, that *'we live and move and have our 
being" in a divine universe. 

The numerous views expressed in the written 
testimonials of enemies and friends are of interest 
mainly among the curiosities and puzzles of his- 
torical criticism, and their medley of confusions 



INTRODUCTORY INTERESTS 13 

is entirely outside of the meaning that is her mes- 
sage to hmnanity. The supreme faith-mind, re- 
vealing its strength and way to every aspiring 
youth or suffering soul, is a fundamental and orig- 
inal value, existing long before any of the theo- 
logical explanations were adopted that raised her 
religious merit to the rank of saints. It is enough 
for our consideration here that she built an inde- 
structible house of faith, wherein we may find our 
refuge and our strength as heirs and joint heirs 
in a divine system of moral law. ' 

4. In the Begmnmg Was Meammg 

A life is like a word. It is the sign of an idea. 
The life-idea is fulfilled either in faith or in will. 
The creative inspiration of faith as social work, 
is not the same as the possessive satisfaction of 
will as individual conquest. Lives that live their 
inspiration in faith have a different meaning from 
those that live their satisfaction as will. It may 
be wise to believe that they have a different des- 
tiny. The law of faith can never mean the same 
as the law of will. It may be the difference that 
Americans see between Washington the liberator 
and Napoleon the conqueror. It may separate 
more clearly for us the mind of Judas from the 
mind of Christ. It may show that the human race 
is divided into two kinds of beings as distinct in 
class as apes and angels, especially when we try 
to understand the faith of Joan of Arc in clear 



14 JOAN OF ARC 

contrast with the will of the conclave at Rouen. 

Selfishness in control of ignorance has re- 
mained master of the human way. From the be- 
ginning, its slavery of suffering and madness has 
possessed the whole process of civilization. 
Through all the story of the human struggle, the 
self as will, either in destructive anarchy or in 
organized autocracy, has kept the mastery over 
faith in unceasing despotism and war. Nature 
has endeavored to develop mind above the will 
into intelligence as the social reason of moral 
law. It has brought its own house to order as 
an intelligible physical system. The will of phys- 
ical chaos has become extinct in the faith of cos- 
mic law. Human intelligence is likewise hard at 
work to make the world safe for social reason. 
History is succeeding in showing that will is the 
maker and meaning of miseiy and war, while in 
flamiug contrast it is revealing that faith is the 
maker and meaning of society and science as the 
ends of moral law. 

The autocracy of Csesar^s will required the mar- 
tyrdom and meaning of the Son of Man to make 
world dominion impossible, and the anarchy of 
warring wills in Europe required the martyrdom 
and meaning of a Child of Faith to restore the 
mind of France to the rights of nations. There 
had to be some costly valuation of faith made 
manifest to the oppressed and stupefied people, 
yet remaining alive in the midst of the hundred 
years 'war that was still ravaging western Europe. 



INTRODUCTORY INTERESTS 15 

Jeanne of the Domremy fields was one of the 
keepers of the faith, who gathered into her soul 
the meaning of humanity and was thus called to 
show the people that one lone girl, loving life with 
all the passion of youth, could be master over all 
the evil possible in the art and might of men. 
Now passing five centuries of time, she still lives 
in immortal youth, and waves her banner of faith 
to the long line of oncoming generations, with 
more worth for humanity in its golden folds than 
all the arts of Greece and the powers of Eome. 
Her life-meaning continues forever to be a source 
of inexhaustible empowerment that surpasses all 
the masteries of university logic, theological ex- 
communications and decrees of empire. 

5. The AlmigM'y Way 

Jeanne d'Arc was the long, straight aim of 
Faith. Her reason formed judgments into will 
from passing events only for passing events. In- 
tellect with its learning was expedient and instru- 
mental among the changing values of temporal 
affairs. Faith meant practical work. She prob- 
ably did not know that Paul said so. She could 
hardly have known that the prophets all said so. 
Even her voices did not say so. They merely said, 
over and over again, "Go on, Daughter of God, 
go on, go on." She knew the rest. She tells us 
through the best of her experiences, and on to the 
end through the worst, **For that I was born." 



16 JOAN OF ARC 

And we at once know the same to be trne as to 
ourselves, because, for nothing less were we born, 
than to possess eternity through faith, and to 
count out, in harmony with it, the sands of time, 
one by one, as moments of intelligence and will. 

She had only one conception of what she stood 
for before the throne of faith, and that was the de- 
liverance of right from the might of wrong. This 
simple understanding and her endeavor, continued 
to *'the last full measure of devotion," enthroned 
her among the shining ones of humanity who have 
kept the faith and fought the good fight for the 
meaning and worth of a soul. But hers was the 
task to uphold the great white light of life, as one 
long besieged, helpless and alone, under the most 
desperate mastery and the maddest learning ever 
known. Hers was the most extensive and merci- 
lessly tried-out faith, and the most completely 
witnessed, of any recorded in history. The pro- 
longed and exhaustive investigations of her life, 
minutely exacted by both enemies and friends, 
reveal all that can be known of any one, and noth- 
ing could be found but the noblest of human souls. 
Peasants, priests, warriors, poets, historians, 
popes and kings, alike bear evidence of the pro- 
foundest interest in her wonderful career. Their 
testimony for her reveals the most significant vi- 
sion of womanhood in all our records of the 
human struggle. 

The series of events composing the story of her 
deeds, as told by so many varieties of witnesses, 



INTRODUCTORT INTERESTS 17 

from so many points of view, are consistent only 
as they illustrate a way of triumph and martyr- 
dom unsurpassed in any literature or history. 
Biographical accuracy, as to time, place, persons, 
explanations and statements, or the varied course 
of events, is impossible, and is not essential ex- 
cept as it concerns the character of her faith 
whose meaning is one of the greatest human 
values ever revealed in the progress of man. 



6. The Meaning of Human Life 

The supreme wonder-woman of the world said 
that she did not know A from B, but she made an 
army religious, she made brutal and brutalized 
men respect all the mercies, she gave courage to 
cowards, turned highwaymen into patriots, drove 
mercenaries from the siege of cities, and in a few 
weeks turned the tide of a hundred years' war so 
that a lost nation was restored to the civilization 
of the world. 

After she had broken the will of war in her war 
against war, and aroused a world-wide respect 
second only to reverence for the mother of Christ, 
she was seized by the powers of church and state, 
and through long and desperate months con- 
founded the most learned men of the age, defeated 
the brutality of the most powerful wills in Eu- 
rope, and endured in suffering far exceeding all 
that any man had ever endured in keeping the 
faith of man and God. 



18 JOAN OF ARC 

It can not be said that she knew better than we 
do what her life meant. It is very doubtful if she 
thought of a meaning for her life. In truth it 
may be doubted if any one is ever born with vision 
enough to know what his life means. "We can be 
sure of nothing except that meaning exists only 
in a faithful life upon a loyal way. 

Even as in ancient times a wonderful mother- 
woman said, so she said, ''Behold, the handmaid 
of the Lord; be it unto me according to Thy 
word, ' ' and she went forth to the great fulfillment 
and the great victory. 

''Not my will but Thine be done" was the sur- 
render she made to her soul interest as being her 
only possible destiny. 

She proved that there is no sign from God but 
a life of faith even as there is no sign from the 
eternal law but the ever recurring truth of the 
universe. 

7. Patriotism for the Democracy of the World 

History has bequeathed to us a record of un- 
paralleled completeness describing Joan of Arc as 
the most wonderful woman that ever lived in all 
the experiences of mystic, warrior and martyr. 
Art has supplemented history with many thou- 
sands of books, tragedies, romances, poems, paint- 
ings and statues displaying her in holy entrance- 
ments, in the wild assaults of war, and in the final 
heroism of the stake. Ecclesiastic council in the 



INTEODUCTORY INTERESTS 19 

light of legend, miracle and logic doubted her, 
accepted her, condemned her, burnt her and made 
her a saint. 

Historians, romancers, poets, painters, sculptors 
and ecclesiastics have those interests, but such 
values are really only incidental in her meaning 
for humanity. The historical and the art work 
do not give us this woman any more than they give 
us Christ or God. The immortal wonder of her 
character and her career is the same that made 
Moses, that gave us Socrates, that sustained Paul, 
that worked out the dream of religious liberty, 
that is making the world safe for democracy, that 
will make democracy safe for the individual, and 
that shall give unto humanity the mind of the 
universe as the kingdom of God. 

Joan of Arc was faith in right as the mind of 
God. Her voices and the light in which they live 
is the light of every man that cometh into the 
world. If we do not know her faith we have no 
vision of the woman. If we do not understand 
her hope we have no measure for her career. If 
we do not appreciate her love for France we can 
have no understanding of her meaning for hu- 
manity. We have not yet realized what is that 
divine meaning which is given for the healing of 
the nations or for the salvation of man, the faith 
that removes mountains and gives the victory 
over death. 

Human character in all its heights and depths, 
engulfed in human wickedness in all its heights 



20 JOAN OF ARC 

and depths, with human faith nnsurpassably en- 
during and triumphant, is shown in Joan of Arc 
as in no other human being in all the history of 
mankind. No other life, inside and out, is so thor- 
oughly revealed as a human document. 

Tennyson in his Dream of Fair Women speaks 
of her as 

"Joan of Arc 
A light of ancient France." 

But she is supremely more. In exalting the vi- 
sion of her, we are lifting on high her Light of 
Faith, which can be neither described nor exag- 
gerated, and the light of France is seen to be the 
Light of the world. 

Lamartine in his study of Joan of Arc says, 
"All nations have in their annals some of those 
miracles of patriotism in which a woman is the 
instrument in the hands of God. When every- 
thing is desperate in the cause of a people, we 
need not yet despair, if the spirit of resistance 
still subsists in the heart of woman. . . . This is 
the concentrated recoil and reaction of a whole 
nation condensing its sufferings into the heart of 
one, compressing its universal wail into the shriek 
of a woman, and thus marvelously accomplish- 
ing by a single hand the salvation of all. . . . En- 
thusiasm is a holy fire : its flame can not be ana- 
lyzed. . . . Such is the spirit of this history, — a 
history more resembling a story from the Bible 
than an episode of the modem world. . . . Her 



INTRODUCTORY INTERESTS 21 



mission was simply the bursting into action of pa- 
triotic faith. She lived in it, and died through it, 
and she was lighted to victory and to heaven by 
the flame of her enthusiasm as well as of her 
funeral pyre. Angel, maiden, warrior, martyr, 
she has become a fit blazon for the soldier's ban- 
ner, — a type of France." 

Shakespeare in King Henry VI wrote a wonder- 
ful prophecy of her fame : 

"No longer in Saint Dennis will we cry- 
But Joan la Pureelle shall be France's Saint." 

When all the world thought her bad, he said in 
the same play: 

"No; misconceived Joan of Are hath been 
A virgin from her tender infancy, 
Chaste and immaculate in every thought; 
Whose maiden blood, thus vigorously effused 
Will cry for vengeance at the gates of heaven." 

8. The Price Paid for Civilization 

Joan of Arc is probably the greatest human ex- 
ample that ever lived of what constitutes the di- 
vinity in man; that is, the faith which elevates 
human nature above all the powers of the world. 

The exalted faith of the Maid of Orleans and 
the work she wrought that no man could do, makes 
of her a singular type of symbolism for woman. 

Thomas De Quincey says, ''Pure, innocent, 
noble-hearted girl! . . . this was amongst the 



22 JOAN OF ARC 

strongest pledges of thy truth, that never once 
didst thou revel in vision of coronets and honor 
from man. . . .To suffer and to do, that was thy 
portion in this life, that was thy destiny." , 

Ida Tarhell in her brief review of Joan's life, 
when speaking of the inquisition says, *'They 
went to her when she was ill and likely to die. 
But they could not touch this clean white thing. 
It slipped through their fingers like a ray of 
light." 

Samuel L. Clemens in his Joan of Arc says, 
* ' The character of Joan of Arc is unique. It can 
be measured by the standards of all times without 
misgiving or apprehension as to the result. 
Judged by any of them, judged by all of them, it 
is flawless, it is still ideally perfect, it still occu- 
pies the loftiest place possible to human attain- 
ment." 

What, then, is the loftiest place possible in hu- 
manity but loyalty to the ideal of human life 
known to us in its highest consciousness of mind 
as faith in God. 

The splendid characterization made by Mark 
Twain in his preface, continues, *'She was per- 
haps the only entirely unselfish person whose 
name has a place in profane history. No vestige 
or suggestion of self-seeking can be found in any 
word or deed of hers. . . . Joan of Arc, a mere 
child in years, ignorant, unlettered, a poor village 
girl, unknown and without influence, found a great 
nation lying in chains, helpless and hopeless un- 



INTRODUCTORY INTERESTS 23 

der an alien dominion, its treasury bankrupt, its 
soldiers disheartened and dispersed, all spirit tor- 
pid, all courage dead in the hearts of the people. 
. . . she laid her hand upon this nation, this 
corpse, and it arose and followed her. She led it 
from victory to victory, she turned back the tide 
of the Hundred Years' War . . . earned the title 
of Deliverer of France . . . and French priests 
took the noble child, the most innocent, the most 
lovely, the most adorable the ages have produced, 
and burned her alive at the stake.*' 

Carlyle, severe critic as he was, describes ' ' The 
radiance of her heart ... as clouds are gilded 
by the orient light into something more beautiful 
than azure itself. ' ' Guizot declares that ' ' History 
does not offer a like example so pure and effica- 
cious resting on divine inspiration and patriotic 
hope." Andrew Lang wrote that ''Spenser and 
Ariosto could not create, and Shakespeare could 
not imagine, such a being as Jeanne d'Arc." 

9. The Bright and Morning Star 

Previous to the time of Joan of Arc, France 
could hardly be called a nation. There was no 
unity of lang-uage, allegiance or government. 
Joan of Arc was not only the heart from which 
France came forth delivered and restored, but 
also created and established. It is not enough to 
call her the Deliverer of France, but, measuring 
her by the soul and mind she gave to the masses 



24 JOAN OF ARC 

of the French people, she was herself France, the 
mind and soul of France. 

For a hundred years before the time of Joan 
of Arc, wars had swept over France like a pesti- 
lence and had left a trail of ruin like a hurricane. 
Petrarch visiting France about sixty years before 
her time says, "Nothing presented itself to my 
eyes but a fearful solitude, an extreme poverty, 
lands uncultivated, houses in ruins." 

De Seres about a score of years before her birth 
describes the unhappy land in the same terms, 
saying, '*In sooth the estate of France was most 
miserable. There appeared nothing but a horri- 
ble face, confusion, poverty, desolation, solitari- 
ness and fear." 

What a life into which a child should be born ! 
What could it have of social mind for the mean- 
ing of humanity! In such conditions was born a 
mind that did not believe this way to be the desire 
of God, and that girl of faith became for all time 
the noblest knight of Europe and one of the king- 
liest characters of all the world. 

Louis Kossuth, the Hungarian patriot, said, 
''Consider the unique and imposing distinction. 
Since the writing of human history began, Joan 
of Arc is the only person of either sex who has 
ever held supreme command of the military forces 
of a nation at the age of seventeen." 

Truly that distinction is quite unparalleled and 
strange, but far more amazing than this spectacu- 
lar distinction is the faith she found and kept. 



INTRODUCTORY INTERESTS 25 

Voices, power, glory and martyrdom are wonder- 
ful enough, but the sounds she heard in the vesper 
bells, the victory of mighty assaults against con- 
querors, the confusion she brought upon the black 
wit of monstrous men, and the agony of chains 
and fire, are all merely the unaccountable wonders 
that attend her as incidents, giving historical body 
to the power of faith possible in the human soul. 
According to the most reliable descriptions 
gathered from those who knew her, she was a 
little above medium height and of strong endur- 
ing body. Her eyes were of dark blue, her hair 
long, thick and very dark. Her face was of boy- 
ish cast, but so fair, clear and brave that it was 
beautiful and trustworthy from the first glance 
of the observer. In her moments of reserve or 
resolution, she had the stolid look of the op- 
pressed peasant, but it was said that when the 
enthusiasm of her faith was in some great test 
of realization, her whole being was quickened 
with power, her face shone with such a noble zeal 
that cowards turned to fight unto death for her 
cause, irreligious blasphemers became decent and 
orderly in conduct, brigands quit their plundering 
to become patriots, and many an observer sud- 
denly cried out in all sincerity, ''Behold the face 
of an angel." Only gospel-hardened priests, 
prayer-palsied ecclesiastics, and the mad logicians 
of the Church universities were perverted enough 
from Christian faith to be untouched by her di- 
vine purpose, and to be merciless in the presence 



26 JOAN OF ARC 

of her wonderful womanhood. The life she gave 
to Faith affords the most obvious evidence that 
when the mind becomes fast-locked in the logic of 
individual will it is without mercy or justice, and 
in Satanic sovereignty fulfills itself without re- 
gard to man or God. 

The universe, as embodied in nature, in the cre- 
ative process of man, has not entrusted his most 
essential and vital interests either to his intellect 
or his will. They are too weak, unreliable, insuf- 
ficient and limited. The heart does not beat and 
the brain does not work according to intellect or 
will. Neither is birth or death a process in the 
wisdom of man, but as children need the intelli- 
gence and will of parents, so do the mature need 
the intelligence and will of society, even as society 
is safe only in the intelligence and will of the uni- 
verse. In such ''justification by faith" lived and 
died Joan of Arc. Her life appears with meaning 
according to the interest or need that approaches 
it. As a patron saint of France, she is no less a 
patron-meaning to Americans. 

Creasy, in his analytical discussion of the bat- 
tles that have been most important in the process 
and progress of civilization, ranks her victorious 
struggle at Orleans as one of the ''fifteen decisive 
battles of the world," and thus places her, for that 
alone, as one of the greatest benefactors, and 
among the foremost warriors of history. More 
than that, this lowly girl gave a life, as loyal as 
was ever known, in illustrious revelation of the 



INTRODUCTORY INTERESTS 27 

religious principle that became the protestant ref- 
ormation. As her Lord was the greatest martyr 
of humanity, so was she the greatest martyr of 
Christianity, for that freedom of conscience in 
which ''the just shall live by faith.'* Nearly a 
hundred years before Martin Luther nailed his 
fundamental propositions on the cathedral door, 
she perished at the stake for her loyalty to a life 
of ''justification by faith," and that life was af- 
terward enrolled among the saints by the Roman 
Catholic church. 

Historians find a completed period of ancient 
civilization revealing its characteristic achieve- 
ments around the cross of Christ, and likewise, 
the mediaeval period, known as the dark ages, 
came to a close defining itself around the stake 
that held Joan of Arc. The flames that lighted her 
soul through the gates of glory illuminated the 
degenerate despotism of the Middle Ages, as the 
cross illustrated the selfish masteries of the an- 
cient world. The lessons of both are supreme 
with divine meaning for the American people and 
the progress of human life. The Carpenter Man 
built a place in "the house of many mansions" 
for all the children of faith, and he prepared the 
Way which the shepherd girl kept, through every 
tribulation, revealing how all may keep the Faith 
and Way on and on as the Kingdom of God. 



CHAPTER n 
ORIGINS FOR A WONDERFUL FAITH 

1. The People and the Times 

An ancient prophecy in France, that was re- 
vived about the year 1400, was that the kingdom 
would some time be brought to ruin by a woman 
and would be restored by a daughter of the peo- 
ple. The popular version was that a maid would 
come out of the deep forests of the Vosges that 
were visible from the doors of the village Dom- 
remy. 

The first part of the prophecy was already true. 

Queen Isabeau of Bavaria had been married at 
the age of fourteen to Charles VI, a youth of 
twenty-four, who was old with licentious dissipa- 
tion and weak from every exhaustive emotion of 
excess. For thirty years he was an amiable im- 
becile, most of the time too weak in mind to care 
for himself. His wife for her cruelty and in- 
trigues became known and hated as the she-wolf 
of the kingdom. Bloody civil wars demoralized 
and degraded the nation. Then it was that Henry 
V of England thought the time ripe to assert the 
ancient claim of the Plantagenets to the crown of 
France. At the famous battle of Agincourt, in 

28 



ORIGINS FOR A FAITH 29 

1415, he destroyed the French army and then went 
home to complete the conquest later at his leisure. 
In the days that followed, it is said that children 
died in the streets of the cities like flies, for hun- 
ger, and wolves came into Paris at night and fed 
on the unburied bodies of the dead. Life became 
worthless, men went wild in horrible deeds and 
vast numbers of the people lived like beasts. 

The King of England returned in 1419, and 
completed his conquest with the siege of Eouen. 

Isabeau, courting the favor of Henry V, dis- 
owned her son and gave her daughter as wife to 
the English king, thus confirming his authority 
as king of France. The following year Henry V 
died and his infant son was proclaimed king of 
Enarland and France. 



^&^ 



2. The Lawful Heir to cm Outlawed Throne 

Meanwhile, the imbecile husband of Queen Isa- 
beau, Charles VI, had died, and a few unrecon- 
ciled F'rench knights proclaimed his son Charles, 
the dauphin, as king of France, and began to 
gather an army around his standard. 

Charles VII was only nineteen years of age, 
and little better mentally than his father, though 
morally, strange to say, a much more respectable 
man. His attempts to regain the territory of 
France were crushed in two great defeats, and he 
retired to live inactive in the seclusion of Poitiers. 
But terrible marauding parties in his name, and 



30 JOAN OF ARC 

under cover of patriotism, devastated the sur- 
rounding country until it became a wilderness 
where no peaceful citizens dared to live. The 
whole country was in a state of anarchy and utter 
ruin. At last even hope was lost, when suddenly 
there arose a power in the valley of the Meuse. 
It was as if the other portion of the ancient proph- 
ecy was about to come true, and that "a maid of 
the people*' had been divinely called to redeem 
the land from the curse of a woman. 

3. Childhood of the Wonderful Womcm 

Historical evidence, according to the most emi- 
nent authorities, seems to verify the date January 
6, 1412, as the day when a child was born unique 
in the history of civilization. 

Jeanne d'Arc, romantically known as *'the 
Maid of Orleans, '* was the fourth child of Jacques 
d'Arc, a prosperous villager of Domremy, on the 
left bank of the Meuse in the lowlands of Lor- 
raine. Strange to say, for that far oif period, 
now more than five hundred years ago, we have 
the most minute descriptions of her life, abun- 
dantly given from both herself and her neigh- 
bors, and it is all as authentic as any other sworn 
testimony Jn history. She says of herself, ''I 
learned well to believe, and have been brought up 
well and duly to do what a good child ought to 
do." She had a truly wonderful mother whose 
name was Isabeau Romee, her given name being 



ORIGINS FOR A FAITH 31 

the same as tliat of the wicked queen and the sur- 
name indicating a parentage that had some time 
earned the name Eomee by a pious pilgrimage to 
Rome. 

There was much that was marvelous attested 
by many witnesses, but the marvelous, whether 
accepted or rejected, in no way alters the wonder- 
working faith of her life. Her mother had a very 
vivid dream, which she told to many friends, that 
she would give birth to a great warrior. Merlin 
the warlock had made a prophecy, that had be- 
come famous in those suffering regions, that ^'A 
wonderful Maid would eome from the regions of 
the Oak Wood for the healing of the nations." 
Marie d 'Avignon had suffered so many things in 
a dream that she came with it to the mad king 
Charles VI, declaring that a Maid was to put on 
armor and be the salvation of France. The won- 
der-world recorded these interests as essential to 
her history or as necessary to the explanation of 
her life, but whether so or not, she had the faith 
that was greater than will and revealed a way 
that we now know is the heritage of every normal 
believer in the righteous might of the moral uni- 
verse. 

4. Wonder-Stories Told hy Credulous Neighbors 

Boulainvilliers wrote a letter to the Duke of 
Milan in which h^ says that on the night when 
Joan was bom, a strange ecstasy possessed all 



32 JOAN OF ARC 

the peasants of Domremy and throughout the 
night they ran around through the darkness be- 
side themselves as of something marvelous that 
had come to pass. They sang sweet songs and 
danced in rhythmic figures, in token of the salva- 
tion they felt coming to their devastated country. 

It would take volumes to tell all the wonder- 
stories recorded of her childhood, but they only 
increase the evidence of the pathetic yearning 
magnifying every expression of hope in the minds 
of the suffering people. It may explain the mean- 
ing of her wonderful life to see in her the psycho- 
logical demonstration of a religious patriotic 
mind, becoming the organizing center of environ- 
ment for the social process of making the world 
safe for the rights of man. 

Boulainvilliers, according to investigations 
made twenty years after her death, among the 
people of Domremy, tells how they understood 
that the idea of her mission first came into her 
mind. She with her girl playmates were watch- 
ing their sheep, when they decided to run a race 
for some flowers. Joan seemed to fly to the goal. 
Her companions declared that her feet did not 
touch the ground. When they reached her they 
found her in an ecstasy among the flowers. Then 
she said that a youth standing near her had told 
her to go home as her mother wanted her. But, 
on returning to the house, she found her mother 
displeased that she had left the sheep. So, think- 
ing that a joke had been played upon her, she 




1^ .s 



ORIGINS FOR A FAITH 33 

returned to the meadow. But all was Md from 
view by a bright cloud out of which came a voice 
bidding her to change her way of life, so as to be 
more prayerful, because the King of Heaven had 
chosen her to do marvelous deeds for the king 
of France. This was in the summer of 1425, when 
she was thirteen years of age. She was greatly 
troubled what to do, when, a few days later, ac- 
cording to the records of her story, as she was 
alone in the fields, Michael, the Warrior of Heav- 
en, came to her and revealed to her what she 
should do to make herself strong for her task 
to save France. 

However superstitious in origin the prophecies 
were, arising out of the pitiful miseries of the peo- 
ple in that ignorant age, and however much the 
ignorance and the suffering gave rise to the career 
of this strangely inspired girl, there yet remains 
the clear vision of her loyal struggle against 
wrong, which reveals to actual experience the in- 
finite social difference between faith and will in 
the freedom and morality of man. The life of her 
which we need most to know, in the present prog- 
ress of society, is that of the real woman divested 
of the ignorance and superstition of the times. 
She is not to be seen even in the light of her own 
explanations, because it can hardly be supposed 
that she clearly knew herself or understood the 
dreadfully beclouded way. Her faith in the pres- 
ence of righteous might for human rights may 



34 JOAN OF ARC 

have been miraculous, but the miracle is equally 
ready for every normal mind. 

Perhaps it is miraculous for some one in an 
age of chaos to do the right thing in the right 
way, and to gather a collective mind sufficient for 
victory in a great cause of humanity, but her sur- 
roundings no more explain the origin of her char- 
acter, or the loyalty of her career, than Athens 
created Socrates or Jerusalem accounts for 
Christ. She often went where she did not know, 
and her own eternal urge, welling up from the 
infinite depths of her being, were believed by her 
to be this voice divine, saying to her, *'Go on, 
Daughter of God, go on," and it was enough for 
leader and guide to victory and to death. 

5. Explaining the Miracle of Faith 

The Maid of Orleans is wholly enveloped in a 
cloud of imagination composing the surrounding 
public mind. Some try to picture her as a little 
country girl incapable of the deeds recorded of 
her. In order to explain the vast national events 
that took place in her name, they make her appear 
to be only a most visionary mystic used as a dupe 
through which ambitious leaders could control and 
unify the people. Religious writers account for 
the stupendous results as possible only from one 
directly inspired and strengthened for this great 
work by Divine Providence. Others of merely 
material views, believing that she herself initiated 



ORIGINS FOR A FAITH 35 

and developed the power that restored France, 
have accounted for her as being a great military 
genius, able to see what should be done, and thus 
seeing, was able to convince able men that, through 
her leadership, they could reach success. Some 
account for it all by picturing brave soldiers wait- 
ing, as it were, ready for the word that she hap- 
pened to give, but the history of various tragic 
events bears no such appearance. 

The many histories that have thus been built 
upon her career, each pictures a woman wholly 
distinct in character and personality from the 
others. There is nothing with which to refute the 
argument for either of these various historical 
characters known to us as Joan of Arc, but, from 
a common-sense view of the whole situation, the 
real woman appears to be only one thing, and that 
is faith in the presence of God and His righteous 
might being in all work done for the rights of 
man. Exalted in the intelligence and power of 
that faith she moved on her way through the 
swarming hosts of both good and evil to the final 
restoration of a national France. 

As we read the critical delineations that have 
been labeled Joan of Arc, they each seem so con- 
sistent as to appear quite convincing, even down 
to the trial when she suffered martyrdom as a 
witch, when it looked as if it were historically set- 
tled that she had duped all her followers and had 
been the dupe of ambitious men. It could truly 
be said of her, in paraphrase of another Wonder- 



36 JOAN OF ARC 

ful Vision in human history, ''She could save 
France but herself she could not save." 



6. A Glimpse at Simple Childhood 

We have abundant evidence, unmistakably au- 
thentic, that the little country girl of Domremy 
grew up healthy and strong, wholesome and happy 
as her companions, indistinguishable from the 
other bright and well-kept children of her age. 
She was surrounded by superstitions and relig- 
ious fancies that were almost a normal condition 
considering the equal distribution of such pious 
imagination among all the people. Wild boars 
and wolves abounded in the near-by forests and 
sprites and fairies peopled the streams and mead- 
ows. Charms and spells and prayers of many 
varieties were believed to be necessary to protect 
life and promote every interest. 

At her trial in Rouen, she talked freely as a 
child about these things to her judges, but never- 
theless she used the most commendable wisdom, 
considering the fearful meaning all her words 
might bear for her before those men, and the prej- 
udiced ignorance that possessed all concerning 
such ideas. She told her judges that she had never 
seen such things though ber godmother, who was 
a truthful woman, had seen many visions of spir- 
its and fairies. 

There was a great oak in Domremy, which the 
people believed to be the home of the fairies. The 



ORIGINS FOR A FAITH 37 

Lords of the Manor each year held a great festi- 
val there and the children danced around the tree 
and sang songs. The judges at Eouen, so cruelly 
trying to fasten on her the charge of being a witch, 
asked her about that tree. She described the 
scenes, and her language was written down, and 
is still preserved, in which she said, ''I have often 
seen the little girls putting garlands on the 
branches of this tree, and I myself have some- 
times put them there with my companions. Some- 
times we took the garlands away, sometimes we 
left them. Since I have grown up I do not re- 
member to have danced there. I have danced 
there with other children, but I have sung there 
more than danced." 

One of the stanzas the girls sang thoughtlessly 
around the Fairies' Tree was: 

"Airy fairy of the tree 
Made of dust and dew and fire, 
Now no bigger than the bee, 
Taller now than tallest spire, 
Grant my heart's desire to me, 
Grant to me my heart's desire." 

7. 'A Great Pity for Frcmce 

The religious mind of such a devoted soul might 
easily have become possessed of the faith that she 
was the Maid to be called from heaven to restore 
God's kingdom in France. She may have so con- 
secrated herself to such an idea that all her mind 
and soul and body grew up to that divine end. 



38 JOAN OF ARC 

But even so, this in no way invalidates the power 
of faith within her for great deeds in the rights 
of man as the cause of God. 

At last the time came in the midst of prayerful 
meditation when she heard a voice proclaiming 
her as the one chosen to restore France. So she 
trained herself in saintly ways, not as a mystic, 
but as one doing God's work in the world. It was 
said in the sworn testimony of one who knew her 
well that, ''In her village she passed for a pru- 
dent, industrious girl of blameless behavior, God- 
fearing and charitable, a daughter to be a bless- 
ing in her father's house." This does not de- 
scribe a mystic but the mind of a common-sense 
girl. She grew up to be a beautiful and stately 
young woman, eager to understand the times and 
the people of her country. 

As to the miraculous in her mind, one thing is 
sure, she did not receive her inspiration from any 
experience in Domremy. As she said, **I felt the 
great pity there was in France." In her belief, 
it was God's kingdom then in the hands of his ene- 
mies, and her faith was that any effort against the 
enemies of right would have the protection and 
help of God. 

8. Voices and the Summons to Faith 

Joan's visions began, according to her own 
story, in the midst of the times when all the sur- 
rounding country was being ravaged by bandits 



ORIGINS FOR A FAITH 39 

from the various army camps of invading forces. 
Domremy had somehow escaped these savage 
raids. Only once had the village been looted and 
all the stock driven off. But even then, prompt 
help arrived, as by chance, the robbers were fol- 
lowed, driven off and the cattle restored. 

It was soon after this, when, one May day at 
noon, according to one of the records, she was at 
work in her father's garden, which was between 
her home and the church, a small plot of ground 
alongside the graveyard. She says that she sud- 
denly became aware of a bright light on her right 
side toward the church. In the midst of the light 
was a colossal figure of the archangel Michael, 
surrounded by his angels. She said she recog- 
nized the figure at once as Saint Michael because 
she had often seen his image in churches. She 
was much frightened but the vision soon faded 
away. But after that the vision returned fre- 
quently and she felt a wonderful peace of soul 
whenever the white light shone about her., Pres- 
ently she ventured to ask what the saint wanted 
of her and the reply came like the sound of vesper 
bells, "Be a good girl" was the burden of every 
response. *'Be a good girl, Jeannette, be a good 
girl and God will aid thee." 

One day the voice said, *' Saint Catherine and 
Saint Margaret will come to thee. Act according 
to their advice; for they are appointed to guide 
thee and counsel thee in all that thou hast to do, 
and thou mayst believe what they shall say unto 



40 JOAN OF ARC 

thee.*' Presently they came and she so loved 
them that she wished they could have taken her 
away with them. 

At first their voices and their desire were not 
clear, except that she must help France. Then 
she took these voices as her guide, they became 
her voice of faith, and she gave them the last full 
measure of human devotion, asking nothing but 
the salvation of her soul. 

9. From Whence Cometh Faith 

She was full of prophesying and, girl-like, could 
not keep her secret. On the eve of St. John's, 
probably a month after she had made her first 
effort to interest the military commander, she met 
a well-behaved boy whom she knew well, and she 
said, *' Michel Lebuin, between Coussey and Vau- 
couleurs is a girl, who, in less than a year from 
now, will lead the Dauphin to Rheims and cause 
him to be anointed King of France." 

Another day she met Gerardin d'Epinel, a good 
man whom she did not like because he was un- 
friendly to the cause of France. Though she had 
taken the place at the baptismal font as godmoth- 
er to his infant son, she could not tell him clearly 
what was flowering in her soul, yet she said, '* You 
gossip, if you were not a Burgundian there is 
something I would tell you." 

Her endeavors to be good as her voices told her 
did not mean the suppressing of her being the one 



ORIGINS FOR A FAITH 41 

chosen to restore the kingdom from the ruin of 
Queen Isabeau. All the village knew her dreams, 
and, while some wondered, many pointed to her 
mockingly, saying, "There goes she who is to re- 
store the royal house and redeem France.'* 

No one of all her critics has ever thought of 
questioning her sincerity. All students of her his- 
tory know that she believed what she said. There 
could be no doubt among her neighbors nor the 
people of her time, as to her being inspired. 
Every one from the home peasants to the learned 
doctors from the University of Paris believed 
she had supernatural guidance. The only ques- 
tion was, whether her visions and voices came 
from Satan or God. This question was as easily 
settled then as are questions of good or bad set- 
tled now. Was it for or against the person pass- 
ing judgment? If against, then it was of Satan; 
if for, then it was of God. Those whom she op- 
posed, when they had her body in their power, 
burnt her; those who at last realized her value 
to their needs, were honest enough, when they 
could do nothing better, to redeem her name and 
declare her a saint. We may not always be sure 
when judgment is free from will. But the great 
idea was not her value for or against, it was the 
revelation of faith as the infinite meaning and 
power of life in victory over death and hell. This 
revelation is not mystic, nor superstitious, nor re- 
ligious, but the natural recognition of eternal con- 
sistency in the moral universe. 



CHAPTER m 

EARLY INTERESTS IN THE GREAT 
CAUSE 

lo In the Lowlands of Lorrame 

In the river Meuse, near Domremy, there was 
an island in the center of which was an ancient 
fortified castle, partially in ruins. Joan's father 
with other land proprietors leased the island as 
a place where they could drive their flocks and 
defend themselves, when endangered by the 
hordes of mf&ans that ranged over the country 
ravaging and slaying at will in the name of the 
insane king and the wicked queen. On holidays 
the people had festivals on the romantic island 
and the children played at battles and sieges. 

How we can dream of what visions might have 
passed .through the mind of the wonder-child as 
she wandered about through those romantic ruins ! 
Could she in her wonderful imagination restore 
the battling hosts that had surged around those 
walls, and the victorious displays made by the 
Lords of War! What did she dream prophetic 
of her immortal name and what did she see of 
crowns and kings and the courtly world! 

Jacques d'Arc, Jeanne's father, was a man of 

42 



EARLY INTERESTS 43 

popular influence and strong character. Two 
years before Joan declared her mission, he had a 
disturbing dream. He awoke with the noise of 
battle in his ears and a vision in his eyes of his 
daughter riding away in armor with men of war. 
He furiously declared to his sons that such a 
dream was a terrible dishonor, and must not come 
true. *'If such a thing should happen," he said, 
"you must drown her or I will.'* 

However little or much we may believe in super- 
natural visitations, or the testimony that endeav- 
ors to describe them as experiences, we do not yet 
know enough to dismiss them from the life of 
Joan of Arc, and equally that same ignorance is 
unable to demand that they be accepted as com- 
munications from supernatural truth. 



2. Hopeless Misery and Superior Faith 

Joan lived in an age of faith, though it was often 
blind in credulities of ignorance, but there can be 
no doubt that her mind was religious wholly in 
every essence, that she was in all truth a sublime 
religious soul. In a distracted and suffering 
world, how else could such a soul live except as a 
dedicated spirit, dedicated to the greatest need 
of her time. Is it not so of the saints and martyrs 
and heroes of all ages? The religious soul is the 
dedicated life. The religious mind has a work to 
do and for such cause was it brought into the 
world. There is probably no other mission for 



44. JOAN OF ARC 

any one brought into the world and no other hu- 
man reason for any one being bom. 

She can not be classed as a mystic, for religions 
mysticism has more the appearance of religious 
hypnotism. ' She lived only to realize her faith in 
works. \ There was in her no characteristic of the 
mystic. She was quick with expedients, always 
intelligent and alert, always living normally the 
life around her. Orthodox symbols and methods 
were a part of her religious customsj, but her faith 
drove straight to the mark and she had little use 
in her mission for clerks, priests and diplomats. 
According to her view, the king was entitled to his 
throne only as he dealt right with his people as a 
political agent of God. Almost the first idea we 
find her mind centering upon was, as she said, **I 
had a great will and desire that my king should 
have his kingdom.'* Everything she could reach 
was used to nourish and enlighten that desire, but 
she none the less believed in being a good girl 
and a normal woman. 

She testified at Rouen, in answer to her judges, 
*^I learnt to spin and sew, and in spinning and 
sewing, I fear no women in Rouen." 

3. Preparation and Understanding 

It is said that she eagerly listened to the vari- 
ous wayfaring men, stragglers and traveling mer- 
chants who came through her village, and she was 



EARLY INTERESTS 45 



incessantly endeavoring to learn about the armies, 
the wars and the enemies of France. 

Her parents were anxious for her to marry and 
they insisted on pressing the suit of a favorable 
lover, but Jeanne had sworn a vow of chastity 
and she believed there was a greater mission in 
store for her than marriage. The youth even 
brought suit against her in the courts, doubtless 
with the connivance of her parents, to compel her 
to marry him, but she appeared in person before 
the magistrate to plead her own cause, and she 
won the case. This was in 1428 when her family 
had been driven out of Domremy by the English 
army and had taken refuge in Neuf chateau, where 
she had to mingle with the rough soldiers and en- 
dure many distressing trials of faith and endur- 
ance. 

The written testimony of thirty-four persons 
who knew her childhood intimately was taken in 
the year 1439, so that in all things relating to the, 
common affairs of her life, the evidence is prac- 
tically unimpeachable. These commonplace inter- 
ests, giving us a living woman and her priceless 
inspiration for humanity, are what we need most 
to know of her, as a meaning and example for 
faith as being the greatest power for right life. 
It matters little how much we accept or reject of 
her voices and visions, or the superstitions and 
miracles of her times, provided we cherish the 
inexhaustible riches of her loyalty and love for 
man and God. 



46 JOAN OF ARC 

4. Records Seventy Years Before the Discovery 
of America 

Nicolas Bailey examined fifteen witnesses in 
Domremy for the English judges in 1431, and, 
when twenty-eight witnesses were examined in 
1456, he said that their testimony as to Joan and 
her family was the same as those he had exam- 
ined twenty-five years before. The confusions of 
records, that make it impossible to write a con- 
sistent and consecutive history of her sayings and 
deeds, in no way invalidate an unmistakable ideal 
to be seen in the harmony of her mind and in the 
principles for which she sacrificed her life. 

Many theories have been offered to account for 
Joan of Arc, but she can hardly be thought of as 
merely a religious puppet managed as the tool of 
ambitious men, especially when we consider the 
accounts of her long, persistent struggle through 
almost insurmountable discouragements and de- 
feats to get a chance to lead her people against 
their enemy. When she did so, there are numer- 
ous indisputable instances where there was no re- 
liance but upon her own strategy, which was exe- 
cuted by her in the best of military art for vic- 
tory. 

It was said of her that *' whatever confronted 
her, whatever problem she encountered, whatever 
manners became her in novel situations, she un- 
derstood in a moment. She solved the problems, 
she assumed the manners, she met the rain of ar- 



EARLY INTERESTS 47 

rows and bullets, she faced doctors and clerks, 
she animated her soldiers as did Napoleon four 
centuries later, she spoke and acted like a captain, 
like a clerk, or like an experienced woman of the 
world, as the need of the hour required," and all 
this when she was not yet eighteen years of age. 

5. The Testimony of 'Nearest Friends 

Michelet says, *'It was by no means rare to see 
women take up arms. They often fought in sieges : 
witness the eighty women wounded at Amiens. 
In La Pucelle's day, and in the self-same year as 
she, the Bohemian women fought like men in the 
wars of the Hussites. The originality of La Pu- 
celle, the secret of her success, was not her cour- 
age or her visions, but her good sense. Amidst 
all her enthusiasm the girl of the people clearly 
saw the question, and knew how to resolve it.*' 

Michelet believes she was one of those who can 
be described only as a genius, and yet, so won- 
derful as to seem explainable only as a miracle. 
But there have been so many of this extraordi- 
nary genius that were found to be so merely in 
the trivial and worthless, that they could be clas- 
sified only as freaks of nature arising from the 
unknowable conditions of mind. 

Michelet records the testimony of Haumette, 
Jeanne's heart-to-heart childhood friend, who 
says, **She was a good girl, so simple and gentle. 
She spun and attended in the house, no different 



48 JOAN OF ARC 

from other girls." He notes the testimony of 
Simonin Mousnier, a laborer, who said, ** All loved 
her because she nursed the sick and was charitable 
to the poor. I was a child and when I was sick 
she nursed me." Others in the village of Dom- 
remy are on record as saying that she was the 
best girl that they ever knew, that **she grew up 
strong and beautiful and true." 

Jean Waterin, one of her nearest friends, a 
youth of good repute, near her own age, tells of 
many instances showing her sincere piety, and he 
testified before the tribunal of restoration that 
he several times heard her say that she was the 
maid who had been chosen to deliver Prance and 
crown the rightful king. Many of her playmates 
describe how happy-hearted, patient, tender and 
devoted she was to all who needed her cheer and 
help. Isabellette, her neighbor's daughter, says 
that no one ever saw Jeanne loitering along the 
road or idling away any of her time. Mengette 
was with her in their first communion at the par- 
ish church and she chided Jeanne with being too 
deeply in earnest, that she must not take the serv- 
ice so much to heart. The bell-ringer of the 
church tells how Jeanne scolded him when he for- 
got to ring for the service. * * She said I had done 
wrong. Then she promised me some wool of her 
flock if I would be more thoughtful." 

These beautiful little revelations of child char- 
acter come to us through the centuries back from 
an age long before the discovery of America. 



EARLY INTERESTS 49 

And yet, then as now, it shows how each wonder- 
working mind has been one of the utmost sim- 
plicity, self-forgetfuhiess, and singleness of pur- 
pose. ' 

One of her companions, testifying as to her 
character, said, ''She never swore by any of the 
saints, and to affirm strongly she was satisfied to 
say, 'without fail/ She was no dancer, and some- 
times when the others were singing and dancing 
she went to prayer.'* 

6. Superstitions Alien to Faith 

There was great wrong hovering around the 
village of Domremy. The little maid whose mind 
was sensitive, and yet strong enough to appreci- 
ate the disorder, knew that what she saw was in- 
harmonious with the supreme idea she had of God 
as the maker of heaven and earth. Domremy was 
in the marshes of Lorraine near the Burgundian 
border, and in constant fear of her hated neigh- 
bors. Every few days the village boys came back 
from the fields from bloody frays with the ag- 
gressive youths who crossed the border to punish 
the Armagnacs. 

"Many a time," she says, "I saw the children 
of Domremy come back wounded and bleeding 
from fighting with the ones who had come to them 
out of the village of Maxey." 

She knew that the system that made little chil- 
dren fight was not of God. All that was needed 
was a leader for God and He would give the vie- 



50 JOAN OF ARC 

toiy of peace that can 6ome only in war against 
the makers of war. 

Jeanne was not superstitions. Her faith was 
clear. That truth comes often to light through- 
out the years, every day of which was thoroughly 
searched through by her foes for the least morsel 
against her, and then as strenuously searched 
through a few years later by her friends for in- 
disputable evidence that she was true. All of this 
was recorded in sworn documents, most of which 
are still to be seen in the archives of Paris. 

Much was made of the Fairy Tree around which 
the children of Domremy played, but she always 
said of the superstitious claims, '' Whether it be 
true or not I do not know.'^ And the evidence 
is overwhelming that she did not care to know, for 
the superstition of the Fairy Tree concerned her 
faith and her mission no more than the discus- 
sions of the learned doctors. 

Her playmates all testified in their various 
views under sworn statements how she joined 
with them in their holiday plays about the Fairy 
Tree, but whenever she could she slipped away 
to the little near-by church and laid her garland 
on the altar of Our Lady of Domremy. 

Jean Waterin told how the children often 
laughed at her for so much devotion to prayer. 
** Often when we were all at play,'* he said, 
"Jeanne would go away to be alone with God." 
All loved her so that they tried to be good to her 
and to her heart's desire. 



EARLY INTERESTS 51 

Hauviette was three years younger but she re- 
garded it as a great joy when her mother allowed 
her to go over and sleep with Jeannette. Mengette, 
thirty years after, found the greatest happiness 
of her life in being able to tell how she had gone 
into the religious services with Jeanne in the feel- 
ing that to be with her was to be near God. These 
sworn testimonies from so many earnest persons 
bear within themselves the evidence of being true, 
and from the unceasing measure of such a relig- 
ious soul must be considered every subsequent 
phase of her wonderful life. Whatever is brought 
forth contradictory to that loyal faith may well 
be disregarded as foreign to the truth. 

7. The Soul of Character and Life 

Jeanne said, * * Kings are but lieutenants of their 
Lord the King of Heaven," and she bravely as- 
serted without fear or favor that their crowns 
**no goldsmith on earth could fashion." 

Ruskin says, *'The nobleness of life depends 
upon its consistency, clearness of purpose, quiet 
and ceaseless energy." Lord Bacon completes 
the great idea when he says, **Man when he rest- 
eth and assureth himself, upon divine Protection, 
and Favour, gathereth a Force and Faith, which 
Human Nature, in itself, could not obtain." 

Such has been true of every noble character in 
history, and it was brightly exemplified in the life 
of Joan of Arc. No one has ever accused her of 



52 JOAN OF ARC 

living an intentional course of falsehood and no 
one has ever doubted her sincerity concerning the 
belief in her voices, whatever they were, or con- 
cerning her mission, however it shaped her won- 
derful way. 

8. Guidance from the Depths of Mind 

Much controversy has taken place over explana- 
tions of the ' 'voices" which Joan heard. As there 
were legions of false Christs claiming to be Mes- 
siahs, so there were legions of false ''Maids" 
claiming to be directed by "voices." 

Her own recorded words about the voices, as 
written down at the great trial, are as follows: 
"When I was thirteen years old (or about thir- 
teen) I had a voice from God, to help me in my 
conduct. And the first time I was in great fear. 
It came, that Voice, about midday, in summer 
time, in my father's garden. I had not (this evi- 
dently in answer to a question) fasted on the pre- 
vious day. I heard the Voice from the right side 
toward the church, and I rarely hear it without 
seeing a light. The light is on the side from 
which the Voice comes." 

It is not an uncommon experience for persons 
of sensitive and thoughtful temperaments to have 
startling words "pop up," as it were, and, if cul- 
tivated by one with such depths of power as Joan 
of Arc, there might thus be visions and voices 
such as came to her. The sound of vesper bells 



EARLY INTERESTS 53 

often brought these voices to her, and it is not 
uncomnion for many to fancy voices in the varied 
sounds of bells. But this in no wise lessens the 
possibility of some divine possession in these su- 
persensitive moments and there is no kind of ex- 
planation that alters the personal power in her 
faith or its practical worth in character and 
career. 

9, The Task as Faith or Will 

Jeanne very reluctantly yielded to her voices 
telling her to go to the help of France. She says 
that she would rather have been torn to pieces by 
horses than to have gone on a mission so foreign 
to her nature, if it had not been the voice of angels 
from God. The almost insurmountable difficulty 
may be understood when we know how conscious 
she was of her weakness, that she had no friends 
to help her, that her interests would be mistaken, 
that it would be almost impossible for a peasant 
girl, of only sixteen years of age, to see or con- 
vince a king. Besides, it was four hundred and 
fifty miles to the Dauphin's Chateau on the Loire, 
and the way was through an enemy's country, in- 
fested by robbers and murderers. But the voice 
said she was born to do that work. Therefore, 
there was a way, and in the cause of her Lord, 
she must do it. Here the contrast and respective 
service of faith and will may be seen and esti- 
mated. She had no will to meet the unknown dan- 
gers and difficulties that intelligence could see be- 



54 JOAN OF ARC 

setting the almost impossible way. The differ- 
ence is in the fact that faith is the way of life, 
and will is the way of individual judgment. In- 
telligence is insufficient to be wise to a distant 
purpose, and it is never reached as originally 
willed, or found to be worth the value that first 
inspired the way, but intelligence is always suffi- 
cient for the process of perseverance, in which life 
is a development of the infinite moral system. 

Her task is not to be explained as being thought 
out from any foresight of intelligence, and there- 
fore could not have been planned out as any 
achievement or triumph of will. The mystery is 
not so much in her as in others. Gabriel Hano- 
taux, in his studious analysis of her life, presents 
four unexplained mysteries as the practical moral 
interest in her career. The first relates to the 
formation in her mind of the call to such unwaver- 
ing perseverance ; the second is in her definite idea 
to save Orleans and crown the king at Rheims; 
the third, as in the case of Christ, the complete 
abandonment of her by all her chosen friends; 
and fourth, her unanimous condemnation, from 
utterly innocent evidence, by the supposedly most 
learned and judicially fair-minded conclave of re- 
sponsible men in the world. 



CHAPTER IV 

THE FIRST BELIEVERS AND THEIR 
TASK 

1. Beginning to Remove the Mountams 

It was probably in May, 1428, that she no longer 
doubted being called of God to right the wrongs 
of France. She constantly said to her voices, "I 
am a poor girl; I do not know how to ride or 
fight/' Even as Moses of enslaved Israel, it 
seemed impossible for one so weak to be chosen 
for so great a task. But perhaps faith is not 
weak! The voices ever replied, ''It is God Who 
commands it." History had begun to repeat it- 
self in the power of the words, ' * God wills it. ' ' In 
the meaning of those words may yet be found the 
power of peace for all the world. The universe 
has conceived the form of man out of its forces, 
and, in the process of evolution, brought forth his 
social intelligence in the rational order of its in- 
finite system. 

She had always been obedient in everything to 
her parents, but now there was a higher call. 
They could prevent her at the very beginning if 
they knew, and her father had already been en- 
raged, even in the suggestion of a dream, so that 

55 



56 JOAN OF ARC 

he would rather drown her than for her to go 
away with soldiers. 

She must get away from the control of her par- 
ents, and it was a grievous thing, as she after- 
ward confessed. She found a chance. There was 
a cousin of her mother, by marriage, who lived at 
Burey near Vaucouleurs. He needed some one to 
help in his household and Jeanne was allowed to 
go for that work. His name was Durand Lassois, 
and on account of his age she called him uncle. 

Lassois was a witness who gave his testimony 
clearly, as the records show, and there is no rea- 
son to doubt any part of his story. 

She began her work upon him by asking, ** Don't 
you know the saying that France is to be made 
desolate by a woman and afterward to be restored 
by a maidr* 

He had heard the prophecy, because it was a 
common saying throughout all that country. She 
told him of the Voices that had given her the mis- 
sion to free France and crown the Dauphin at 
Rheims. Lassois was impressed enough that he 
brought a young man named Geoffrey du Fay into 
council, and it was decided that she should visit 
Baudricourt, who was the military commander 
over that district. 

We are indebted for an account of the visit to 
a man named Poulengy, who was present when 
Jeanne came into the presence of the military 
commander. She told Baudricourt that she had 
come with a message from the Lord and it must 



FIRST BELIEVERS— THEIR TASK 57 

be sent to the DaupMn. It was then the week of 
the Ascension (May, 1428) and the message to the 
Crown Prince was, ^'Let him guard himself well, 
and not offer battle to his foes, for the Lord will 
give him succor by mid-Lent. ' ' This would be by 
March the next year. He was to be told that by 
God's will she herself would lead the Dauphin to 
be crowned at Eheims as Charles VII, King of 
France. Furthermore, she said it must be under- 
stood that the kingdom belonged to God, not to 
the Dauphin, but that God desired the Dauphin 
to hold the realm under Him. 

Lassois, or, as he is often called, Laxart, was a 
common laborer, and Joan in the coarse red cloth- 
ing of the peasantry could hardly impress a hard, 
rough soldier like Baudrioourt, especially with 
such a preposterous proposition as she brought. 
He treated it as a joke. Poulengy, who was pres- 
ent at the interview, said in his sworn testimony, 
that Baudricourt, being licentious and vulgar, 
thought to use her in an immoral way, but the 
womanly dignity in her demeanor made it impos- 
sible for him so much as to suggest it. 

The commander's answer was to advise Las- 
sois that he box the girl's ears and send her home 
to her father. But the strange peasant girl would 
not be turned aside and she boldly insisted. Then 
Baudricourt suddenly drew his sword, loudly and 
crossly saying, ''What would your voices say to 
this ? " as he flourished it before her. As suddenly 
she snatched a dagger from the belt of an attend- 



58 JOAN OF ARC 

ant, and brought it down npon his sword. The 
knife went through his blade as through paper as 
she cried, **My voices would say this!'* 

Baudricourt shrank back as from a miracle, and 
said, **I'1I see what I can do !" 

2. The Mountains Begin to Move 

Joan had made a prophecy from the voices that 
was accordingly on the way to be fulfilled by 
March. This promise was to supply help to the 
King in a national work of almost impossible 
proportions, and she had so far failed to get even 
a listener at home. Meanwhile the months 
dragged by to January, within three months of 
the appointed time. 

During this time the most violent efforts were 
being put forth by various commanders to retrieve 
some of the fortunes of France, but with unceas- 
ing disaster and defeat. But not an hour had been 
lost by Jeanne. She was incessantly pleading with 
any and all who might have influence to help her 
somehow to reach the princely heir to the throne 
and explain to him her mission. 

**It is absolutely necessary," she incessantly 
exclaimed, ''that I should go thither, for so will 
my Lord. It is on the part of the King of Heaven 
that this mission is confided to mej and, were it 
necessary that I repair thither on my knees, I 
would go.'' 

At last, public opinion in the district of Van- 



FIRST BELIEVERS— THEIR TASK 59 

coTileurs began to become zealous in her favor. 
Her incessant conversation was like the preach- 
ing of a new crusade. It became infection. The 
people began to feel that such devout zeal could 
not be untrue. 

Her bold and confident pleadings among these 
lowly commoners for a way, and her constantly 
reiterated promises as a prophet of God, had no 
prototype in history less than that of Peter the 
Hermit, when he went up and down through Eu- 
rope crying, *'God wills it,'* that the Savior's 
tomb should be delivered from the Infidel. But 
his was the spectacular zeal of a long experienced 
master of crowds and his cause was, in a large 
measure, the pride of one religion against an- 
other. The hosts of Europe were swept together 
by a great storm of feeling and they gave their 
lives only to failure and death. Hers was the 
humble zeal of a young girl knowing only the 
divine meaning in the rights of her people. 

3. The Momitams Begin to Crumble 

Lord de Baudricourt, military governor of the 
province, could no longer withstand the public de- 
mand to help her. But not being sure whether 
she was insane or that it was of the devil, he de- 
cided first on a test. Taking with him the priestly 
enrobed curate of Vaucouleurs, he appeared sud- 
denly at her door, so it is told in the depositions 
of Catherine, wife of Henry, the blacksmith, where 



60 JOAN OF ARC 

she lived. In order to drive out any devils that 
might be in her, the priest suddenly spread out 
before her the broad-embroidered stole, from 
around his neck, saying, ''If you come in behalf 
of the enemy of men, begone from our presence ; 
but if it is upon the part of God, then remain.'* 

On seeing the use being made of the priestly 
ornament, Jeanne fell humbly upon her knees, and 
made fervent acknowledgment of her devotion to 
the cause of God. The priest asked her many 
questions to all of which she promptly replied, 
so that the curate and the governor agreed that 
it might be important enough for them to write a 
letter to the uncrowned King. 

Jean de Metz, a lawless and reckless freebooter 
of the Armagnacs, though he nevertheless had 
much influence in high court circles, heard of the 
strange girl and he came through curiosity, about 
this time, to the house where she was staying, in- 
tending to make sport of her. But, when he be- 
gan, with coarse familiarity, ''My dear, what are 
you doing here ? ' ' she told him clearly and so defi- 
nitely that he was astonished. He then looked at 
this Maid, clothed in the deep red of humble peas- 
ants, with more than curious interest. He de- 
clares, in his sworn statement, that he saw in her 
appearance something impressive far above any- 
thing ever before seen in any peasant girl. He 
now asked her seriously to tell him what business 
had brought her to Vaucouleurs. She replied, ' ' I 
am come to request of Eobert de Baudricourt that 



FIRST BELIEVERS— THEIR TASK 61 

lie will cause me to be conducted to the King, 
either by himself or some other person; but he 
does not concern himself either about me or what 
I say. And yet it is absolutely necessary that I 
see him before the middle of Lent, even if I am 
compelled to wear my legs to the very knees in 
the journey. For no living creature, nor kings, 
nor dukes, nor the daughter of the King of Scot- 
land, nor any others, can retake the kingdom of 
France, since there is no succor for him save 
through myself ; though I had much better like to 
remain at home spinning by the side of my poor 
mother ; for such is not a work fitted for me, yet, 
I must go do it, for such is the will of the Lord.** 

''Who is this Lord?" inquired the visitor, and 
she replied, ''It is God." 

In responsive enthusiasm, he knelt before her 
kissing her hand and swore on his honor that if 
God was their leader Jean de Metz would be her 
khight and take her to the King. 

"When do you wish to start?" he asked. 

"Eather now than to-morrow," was the reply, 
"rather to-morrow than any day after." 

Surely, it may be well said that never had any 
knight a nobler lady. 

4. The Preparatory Interests of the Wonderful 
Journey 

One thing testifies unceasingly to the saneness 
of mind with which Joan approached every task. 



62 JOAN OF ARC 

She never expected God to do anything for her 
that she could do for herself. "Men do the work," 
she said, "and only then is it so that God can give 
the results." 

Schiller in his "Maid of Orleans," referring to 
her many authentic prophecies, has Johanna say 
to one who was in despair for France : 

"No ! there shall yet be wonders, — a white Dove 
Is on the wing, and shall, with eagle boldness, 
Assail these vultures that lay waste the land." 

Jean de Metz asked her if she should go in the 
red clothes she then wore. Women's skirts were 
hardly possible for so long and hard a journey, 
where peril and rough roads required freedom of 
action. She said that she was willing to wear 
men's clothes. Her new-found believer hastened 
to have made for her a soldier's uniform, the peas- 
ants bought her a horse, and she was thus pre- 
pared for the fateful journey. This knight, thus 
wholly transformed in his attitude toward life, 
was now in full sympathy with the long suffering 
peasantry, who were yearning for any gleam of 
hope in the right to live, and so together a way 
was made, regardless of their humble impoverish- 
ment, for her to begin her historical mission. 

It is a marvelous freak of men's minds that 
there should have been such extended controversy 
concerning her use of men's clothes, rather than 
women's, while she had to be with men. It took 



FIRST BELIEVERS— THEIR TASK 63 

up a large part of her trial and was the specific 
charge of relapse into heresy, which brought about 
her expulsion from the church to the stake. The 
town folks of Vaucouleurs were the ones who first 
believed in her, whose enthusiastic support made 
Baudricourt act, and they were the ones who pre- 
pared for her a soldier's uniform that she might 
properly ride the horse they gave her, on the way 
with the little band of sworn knights to see the 
Dauphin. 

5. On the Long, Perilous Way 

This wonderful girl was practical beyond all 
expectations and beyond any mystic visions of 
the operations of special Providence. Her peas- 
ant friends and the sanction of divine will were 
not the means through which to get results in tem- 
poral affairs. She must use temporal means for 
temporal success. 

She wanted the support of responsible men and 
Baudricourt was persuaded not only to write fa- 
vorably to the King, but he sent Poulengy as his 
Tepresentative. Meanwhile, persons of high rank, 
in the hopelessness of the times, were now begin- 
ning to take notice of her. Charles, Duke of Lor- 
raine, who was ill with an unknown and appar- 
ently incurable disease, desired to use her sup- 
posed divine power to get back his health. He 
wanted the service of La Pucelle, the Maid, as 
she was now becoming popularly known. She de- 



64 JOAN OF ARC 

cided to visit Mm. This was probably while she 
was waiting for her soldier's uniform to be made 
and for the equipment necessary for the journey 
of several hundred miles. Her kinsman, Lassois, 
took her to see this important friend. The Duke 
made a deep inquiry into her claims but most of 
all he desired her prayers that he might become 
well. She told him prayers were useless so long 
as he mistreated the duchess, his wife, who was 
a noble and virtuous princess. Likewise, she had 
a chief aim. She wanted him to cause his son, 
Eene of Anjou, to conduct her mission to the 
King. And thus of her own efforts, she had at 
last enlisted a prince, if not in person, at least in 
influence and interest, to lead her to the goal of 
Voices. 

Jeanne's parents had known something of her 
efforts, but it was not until now that her father 
realized that his dream of her was coming true, 
and she was to march away with soldiers. Her 
parents, in great consternation, set out in haste 
for Vaucouleurs to stop their daughter from such 
a mad enterprise. But it was too late. She wrote 
a letter imploring their forgiveness, but she was 
upon the Lord's business and could not turn back. 

The expedition was indeed a hazardous enter- 
prise and attended with considerable cost. Four 
hundred and fifty miles was a long journey, es- 
pecially through a land infested with lawless 
bands of guerilla warriors, roving robbers, Eng- 
lish freebooters, and Burgundian brigands. A 



FIRST BELIEVERS— THEIR TASK 65 

vast assembly from around Vaucouleurs came to 
see her little conclave of seven persons start on 
their momentous journey. 

When the feeble little force set forth on the long, 
dangerous way to the King, some one from the 
crowd called out to Jeanne in warning, how dare 
she face such peril, and she replied, ^'It was for 
that I was born." So it was likewise centuries 
before that a Son of Divine Faith had said when 
brought face to face with the mailed fist of hu- 
man will, ''To this hour was I born." Faith 
knows the way and the work. Only those born 
of the will are limited to self and therefore blind 
to the vision of humanity. 

Again, when they came to a town, where she 
could go into customary religious surroundings 
suitable to the composure she needed, her escorts 
protested against delay, but she said to them, 
"Fear nothing. God clears the way for me. I 
was born for this. ' ' The self or I that she and her 
Savior knew was the divine faith in righteousness 
as the God within them. To several childhood 
friends from Domremy, who had expressed pri- 
vately to her their anxiety for her safety, she cor- 
respondingly expressed herself, *'I do not fear 
armed men. I have God for my Lord, Who will 
make clear for me the road even unto my lord 
the Dauphin." 

Baudricourt had, with noteworthy considera- 
tion, made each of her escort take oath for the 
safe conduct of La Pucelle, and it is recorded 



66 JOAN OF ARC 

that they started on that wonderful way of faith,i 
fully convinced of a great mission, on the first 
Sunday in Lent, the thirteenth of February, 1429. 
According to most authorities this was a few days 
after she was seventeen years old. 

6. The Journey and the Great News 

The sworn statements of those who accompa- 
nied her, one of whom was her brother Pierre, 
agree that, through all the terrors of their jour- 
ney. La Pucelle was unafraid and the noble dig- 
nity of her demeanor inspired them all with cour- 
age to persevere. Jean de Metz says he felt to- 
ward her as toward one sent from God. Bertrand 
says she was as good as if she had been a saint. 

After a hard, perilous journey of eleven days, 
full of adventure and marvelous escapes, she ar- 
rived at Fierbois, which was in the territory pro- 
tected by the King and was therefore her first safe 
resting place. From that place she wrote the 
King a letter, telling of her desperate journey, 
that she was acquainted with many things he 
needed to know, and that she should know whether 
she should enter the city where the King was. 

The favorites of the King laughed loud in de- 
rision because they did not want any one there 
who might be a rival for his affections, especially 
not a peasant girl from Domremy. The Arch- 
bishop of Eheims was a learned politician and he 
did not want any one else to share the honor of 
any victory in the name of God. 



FIRST BELIEVERS— THEIR TASK 67 

But everybody had failed in France. The en- 
emy was slowly mastering the siege of Orleans 
and then even the little that was left of France 
would be at the mercy of the conquering English. 
Creasy, in his "Fifteen Decisive Battles of the 
World," says that, among all the certainties re- 
corded in history none seemed more clearly in- 
evitable than that France was soon to disappear 
as one of the nations of the earth. That a young 
peasant girl should arrive at this desperate hour 
capable of producing one of the most momentous 
changes in all history, seems so incredible as to be 
explainable only by miracle and Divine Provi- 
dence. 

Here was a young girl, attending three masses 
in one day for her patron saint Catherine, who 
had come with seven attendants, through an in- 
credible journey of four hundred and fifty miles, 
across the enemy's country, and alighted without 
mishap at the door of the pious lady in Fierbois. 

''What God keeps is well kept," went with su- 
perstitious awe from mouth to mouth. It seemed 
as if in a few days all the people of France were 
talking about the Maid from the marshes of Lor- 
raine. The weary beleaguered citizens starving 
to death in Orleans, heard of her and began talk- 
ing of her as an angel sent from God for their 
deliverance. They sent messengers who slipped 
out through the besieging camps to inquire if it 
were true. Even the English soldiers began to 
ask questions and wonder. Some became fearful 



68 JOAN OF ARC 

and said, ''What! has God been sent against ns!** 
''Nay, rather say the devil, '^ replied their relig- 
ions counselors. But that was even worse and 
more hopeless. They began to conjure up reasons 
now why the Burgundian army would not help 
them capture Orleans. Either God or the devil 
against them would mean disastrous defeat. Hope 
began to strew La Pucelle's way with flowers and 
fear began to grip the hearts of the enemy of 
France. Already nearly every prayer in perish- 
ing France bore to heaven the name of La Pucelle 
the Angelic One. 

A sign was appearing in the sky of men's 
minds. The question began to arise whether 
after all it could be that right was might, and was 
it indeed true that the invader fought there in the 
right with God. 

7. The Test of the Divinely Appointed Mind 

There was great confusion in the court of the 
King. The royal council was divided about the 
girl from distant Lorraine. But she was given 
protection in the Castle Coudrey about three miles 
from Chinon, the present home of the uncrowned 
King of France. At the Castle Coudrey, she 
was committed to the care of a lady of distin- 
guished piety, wife of Bellier, who was master of 
the royal household. Three of the King's coun- 
cilors were sent to inquire into her mission. 
Jean de Metz was on guard and he conducted 
them to the interview. She was reluctant to tell 



FIRST BELIEVERS— THEIR TASK 69 

any one but the King. However after mucli per- 
suasion she told them that she was sent of God 
to raise the siege of Orleans and to crown the 
Dauphin at Kheims. 

The councilors reported to the Dauphin and 
an appointment was made. Jean de Metz was 
her body guard to the castle of the King. 

Near the gate a horseman rode up with rude 
jest and vulgar oath asking if she was the Maid 
from Lorraine of whom so many were gossiping. 
Looking at him sternly, she said, *'How canst 
thou deny God, when thou art so near death!" 

"Within that hour his horse had thrown him 
into the castle moat, and the story of her proph- 
ecy concerning the nearness of death, added to 
the conviction that a prophetess had come, but 
many dared not affirm surely that her inspiration 
and power were not from hell. The curse of the 
times then as now was not the question whether 
her cause was right or wrong but from what 
party did she come, and for whose pay was she 
taking all this trouble. As usual, reason decided 
for selfishness, and she was right for those who 
profited as long as they profited, and wrong for 
those whose will she opposed. 

The court was called together, as was finally 
decided upon, in the castle hall to receive her. 
Three hundred knights, nobles and gentlemen 
were assembled to see her. Fifty great torches 
illuminated the aisles. This day, March 8, 1429, 
was a historical crisis for France. 



70 JOAN OF ARC 

The Dauphin of France was dressed in civil- 
ian's clothes, it is said on purpose to deceive 
her, while others were robed in kingly garments. 
But she went straight to the King and knelt at 
his feet. 

''Jeanne," he said, pointing to one of the richly 
robed courtiers, ''there is the King." 

"Nay," she replied, "thou art the king and 
none other. God give you good life, my gentle 
lord." 

Many thought there was a miracle in that 
recognition, but doubtless his kind and gentle 
features, from repeated descriptions, were al- 
ready familiar to her. She was entirely too 
practical and keen in observation not to know of 
him, even as to his instability and weakness. If 
he had been a regal man there would have been 
no need for her to have been called to the great- 
est of man's tasks from the sweet green fields of 
Domremy. He would himself have delivered 
France. 

"By what name do you call yourself?" asked 
the King. 

"I am Jeanne the Maid," she replied. 

"What is it that you want of me?" he further 
asked. 

"The King of Heaven sends me to save you 
and your kingdom and to conduct you to Eheims 
for your coronation." 

The warriors in the room were scornful and 
the courtiers were smihng in derision. 




"THOU ART THE KING' 



FIRST BELIEVERS— THEIR TASK 71 

Rheims! it was in the very center of the ene- 
mies' conquest. The road to Rheims was impas- 
sable because of their fortified cities, castles and 
armies. 

But Charles, the Dauphin, was somehow se- 
riously impressed. He led her away from the 
jesting crowd and talked long and earnestly with 
her. In that time she told him, so he said, some- 
thing known only to himself and God. From 
many sources, especially that of De Boissy, who 
was the King's only confidant, there is a common 
belief that he had prayed bitterly to know through 
some sign from heaven that he was in reality the 
true heir to the throne, and she had given him 
that sign by telling him of his prayer, and con- 
vincing him that he was indeed the legitimate 
heir to the throne of France. It was bad enough 
to be the son of Isabeau, who was not only vilely 
immoral but had sold the kingdom to England. 
The doubt was even worse that he might not be 
the son of the late King of France. 

There had been much reason for doubt, as his 
enemies had been declaring, and his conscience 
over this doubt had paralyzed his efforts in many 
ways. It would also not do to let any one know 
that he ever felt such doubts, so, in the fiercest 
hours of her inquisition, when every torture of 
mind and body was brought before her, to frighten 
her into betraying that Something, which had be- 
come known as the ''King's Secret," she held her 
peace and could not be made to betray it. This 



72 JOAN OF ARC 

sublime loyalty to a faithless King, who was also 
a disloyal friend, adds high proof that her mar- 
tyr's death in a moral cause was an immortal 
victory over all the wicked ignorance and selfish- 
ness of the earth. 



8. The Credentials of a King 

Through all the malevolent criticism of the cen- 
turies, endeavoring to discredit her from all 
points of view, no doubt has ever obtained a legiti- 
mate place in any reason concerning the personal 
genuineness of her faith. 

Her great moral persuasion was unchangeable, 
that she could do what she did do, that is, to save 
France from its enemies, to raise the siege of Or- 
leans and to crown Charles VII as King at 
Eheims. She never claimed to be anything more 
than a weak and ignorant girl beyond the one 
great task, and she always maintained that she 
had no knowledge or power or will more than was 
given her through the Voices which she called 
her council. She was fully persuaded and she 
knew in whom she believed. 

Like Paul who knew nothing but Christ and 
him crucified, so La Pucelle knew nothing but the 
pain of France and the crowning of the King, 
who was only so, by being the servant, as she 
was, of the King of Heaven. 

It was a year of staggering calamity. The 
church was divided into struggling factions, the 



FIRST BELIEVERS— THEIR TASK 73 

Turks were overmnning the Christian countries 
of the East, and there were prophets of calamity 
distracting the people of almost every community 
in Europe. 

Charles VII, the Dauphin, for whom Jeanne 
had labored so long to come to his aid, was over- 
timid and over-conscientious, and the counter- 
currents of interests at the courts made intermin- 
able delays. Meanwhile the King had a long pri- 
vate interview with her in which she outlined her 
policy and caused him to agree to three requests. 

1. He must hold his kingdom as a trust from 
God. 

2. He must forgive all his kindred who had 
antagonized him or done him wrong. 

3. He must humble himself so as to receive 
into his favor all who asked for it, great or small. 
This was exactly opposite to the policy advo- 
cated by the Dauphin's chief adviser, La Tre- 
mouille, and it made for her in the King's court 
a cruel and bitter enemy. 

After this interview, the King took her to din- 
ner, and then they went for a walk in the fields. 

If she was to lead the armies of France she 
must know how to ride like a warrior. The Duke 
of Alengon brought her a powerful horse and a 
warrior's equipment. She took them as one long 
accustomed to their use. Mounting the horse 
without aid, she rode before the King with such 
stately grace, that Alengon made her a present 
of the horse and the warrior's arms. 



74 JOAN OF ARC ^ 

9. More Mountains to be Removed 

Such were the distractions in the court over 
her that Charles could not make up his mind 
what to do. Some Franciscan monks were sent 
to investigate every detail of her character as 
known among her neighbors in Lorraine. The 
learned men of the church and the university were 
gathered at Poitiers and Charles decided to have 
her brought before them for decision concerning 
her qualifications and character as a lawful means 
to use for France. 

Thus her plea for soldiers with which to save 
Orleans was answered by her being sent for ex- 
amination to the learned doctors of the Univer- 
sity of Poitiers. 

When she found that she was to be sent there 
to prove her divine mission, she said, ''In God's 
name much ado will be there, I know. But my 
Lord will help me. Now let us go on in God's 
strength. ' ' 

We can easily see why the theological doctors 
worried and annoyed her. She could see no need 
for learned men to interpret her Voices or to set 
any stamp of approval upon anything coming 
from God. She understood her Voices and she 
knew in whom she believed. Anything more than 
this was not only superfluous but absurd. This is 
freedom of conscience. It is the liberty of life. 
But it was her first realization that there was es- 
tablished on earth certain authority and powers 



FIRST BELIEVERS— THEIR TASK 75 

of interpretation necessary to authenticate her 
conunnnion with God, wherever that faith 
might appear as works. 

The King lodged her with the family of his 
advocate in Parliament at Poitiers, and for three 
weeks she was constantly under critical, if not 
hostile, examination by the most learned men of 
the times. Her inquisition was presided over by 
her enemy the Archbishop of Eheims. 

For hours each day she was subjected to all 
manner of shrewd questions to get her to make a 
foolish remark or to contradict herself. But it 
could not be done. Each reasoned from a differ- 
ent beginning for a different vision of success. 
From a different origin, they were on a different 
way to a different land of promise and social ex- 
istence. Such minds never meet. Such persons 
never know each other. The faith-mind does not 
live in the same world with the will mind. They 
do not compose the same kind of persons. There 
is no mutual means for the adjustment of any con- 
flict between them but force and compulsion. The 
minds that have incidents and particulars as meas- 
ures and ideals for religion or morality, for pa- 
triotism or humanity, are either despots or cow- 
ards, fanatics or compromisers, militarists or paci- 
fists, masters or quitters, and they are a different 
order of beings for a different order of society 
from the unconquerable souls whose measure and 
ideal and way are stayed on the Eternal Meaning 
known to us as God and his social universe. 



CHAPTER V 

THE PEOMISED SIGN FROM THE KING OF 
HEAVEN 

1. The Doctors of the Law 

The University of Poitiers could not trap her 
in any irreligous thought or foolish mission. 

*'You tell us," said William Aymery, one of 
the learned Dominican doctors of the law, in the 
council examining her, "that God has great pity 
upon the people of France and wishes to free 
them. If he wishes to free them, there is no need 
for the soldiers you ask for." But her Voices 
were not those of a mystic. She had a practical 
view. 

*'In God's name," replied Joan, ''only as men 
fight can it be so that God may give his warriors 
victory. ' ' 

A Carmelite at last declared that nothing could 
come from God without a sign, and she replied 
with great dignity, "I am not come to Poitiers 
to show signs. Send me to Orleans and I will 
show you a sign there. Give me soldiers many or 
few and I will raise the siege." 

Long before this, the seeker after signs had 
been condemned. The divine witness is never a 

76 



THE PROMISED SIGN 77 

sign but always the truth. When one of the 
learned doctors from the University of Paris 
quoted many learned authorities to prove that 
they should not believe in her, she replied, ' ' There 
is far more in my Lord's books than in all yours." 

Some of her answers to impertinent questions 
were curt enough to enlist the admiration of her 
inquisitors. When Seguin, who spoke very poor 
French, tried to confuse her by asking what lan- 
guage her Voices spoke, she replied, * ' They speak 
a better language than you do." 

After a wearisome day with these learned ques- 
tioners, another delegation was brought in. 

''Listen!" she said to these new tormentors of 
her truth, ' ' I know neither A nor B, but only that 
I am sent by the King of Heaven to raise the 
siege of Orleans and to crown the King at 
Rheims." Then, asking for pen, ink and paper, 
she began dictating, for one of the University 
doctors to write, her famous letter to the English 
demanding their surrender to the French, because 
they were out of order with God's laws by oc- 
cupying French territory and oppressing the 
French people. 

In all these questionings, all the testimony of 
witnesses were taken down in writing by official 
notaries, and sworn to, so that every detail that 
could be found, as to her thinking, as to her con- 
duct or her character, was officially recorded. 
But besides the examination made by the many 
learned doctors, and the testimony of all who had 



78 JOAN OF ABC 

ever known her, Charles caused her to be visited, 
privately and otherwise, by trustworthy women 
of the court and by girls of her own age. She 
was secretly watched and every act reported. 
But all reports agreed that she was incessantly 
engaged as would become one with a mission such 
as hers. Her devotions were always most ear- 
nest and sincere. 

A few days later, she was subjected to a final 
test, after everything had been done that ingenu- 
ity could invent to find some imperfection in her 
either from a social point of view or from the re- 
quirements of the church. She was brought unex- 
pectedly into the presence of Queen Yolande and 
her court of royal ladies. They questioned her 
and applied every test they could think of. But 
there was nothing that was not beautiful, good 
and true. 

All evidences were now in and Queen Yolande 
went into the council chamber where she publicly 
announced to the assembled court and courtiers 
that ' 'no fault can be found in Jeanne d'Arc. She 
is chaste, modest, simple-minded, and good; she 
is truly fitted for her wonderful mission, noble in 
every glory of her sex, and free from all feminine 
weakness but tears." 

2. The Most Remarkable Certificate of Character 
in History 

All possible investigation and analysis of the 
character, motives -and intelligence of Joan now 



THE PROMISED SIGN 79 

having been exhaustively searched, proven and 
recorded, a document was written in the various 
languages of the interested nations, and sent to 
the various governors, especially to the English 
camps besieging Orleans. 

A condensed translation of the document is as 
follows: 

** Charles VII, of France, seeing the necessity 
of his kingdom, and considering the prayers of 
his poor people, ought not to reject the offer 
of the Maid, who says God has sent her to give 
him victory. But, following God's written 
word, he ought to prove her in two principal 
ways : by human prudence, such as inquiry into 
her life, conduct and intentions ; and by devout 
prayer asking for some unmistakable witness 
whether she be come by the will of God, as did 
Hezekiah, Gideon and others. 

''The King has done all this. For six weeks 
he has proven her in every part of her mind 
and life, by scholars, ecclesiastics, pious men, 
men of war, noble ladies, wives, widows and 
children. Publicly and privately, in every man- 
ner and form, have they searched and not one 
has found in her any substance or shadow of 
evil, but only chastity, humility, piety, devo- 
tion, simplicity and womanly honor. Besides, 
of her birth and life many marvelous things 
are faithfully witnessed as being true. 

"As to the second means, of proving her, the 



80 JOAN OF ARC 

King has required of her a divine sign that she 
is from God. To this she replies, that before 
the beleaguered city of Orleans, she will show 
him a sign, for so God has commanded her. 

''Having regard to this, that no harm is found 
in her ; considering her unceasing perseverance 
and the urgency of her plea, to doubt her and 
to set her aside in whom there is no appearance 
of evil, would be to disrespect the Holy Spirit 
of Grace, and to render himself unworthy of 
the succor of God." 



3. On the Wonderful Way. 

La Pucelle was now ofiBcially acknowledged to 
be the agent of the King of Heaven, divinely em- 
powered to restore France to its place among the 
nations. Her fame spread far and wide. Sol- 
diers who had long given up all as lost now gath- 
ered courage and flocked to her standard aflame 
with zeal for her great work. She was soon pano- 
plied in all the gorgeous display of war. But this 
was not her desire. It was the court's idea of a 
holy show. The people were to be impressed by 
display instead of truth. She was an agent pos- 
sessing given power. Divinity must have royal 
robes. She had a body-guard, chaplins and atten- 
dants. Two of her brothers were now with her. 
She was clad in armor made for her at Tours. A 
strangely wrought sword was found in Saint 
Catherine's at Pierbois, as revealed to her by the 



THE PROMISED SIGN 81 

Voices. John Davies in his *' Historic Pro- 
logues," describing her, wrote, 

"Soon as the saintly sword is found, 
Long time entombed in holy ground, 
Armed cap-a-pie, Joan takes the field, 
Celestial agency her shield." 

Jean de Metz was now her treasurer and she 
had a well appointed household, organized by di- 
rection of the King. A special flag or standard 
of white linen was made for her as directed by 
her Voices. The Savior of the world was pictured 
on it seated on a throne in the clouds holding a 
globe in his hands. 

The Maid always bore this standard with her 
in battle instead of a sword. When asked why 
she did this, she replied, at one time, "I love my 
banner forty times more than my sword"; at an- 
other time she said, ^'I can not carry a sword to 
shed blood." 

Amidst all the jealousies, her conduct was al- 
ways superior and faultless, so that no one ever 
dared to approach her with any intent of evil. 
Especially did all women devoutly believe in her. 
She was always joyous and felicitous in expres- 
sion. Her words of praise were always strength- 
ening the courage of those around her. By the 
King's commands no one should do her any dis- 
pleasure and he made it known among the sol- 
diers that her will was law. But she took such 
responsibility with all the ease that had been 



82 JOAN OF ARC 

hers in attending her father's flocks in the fields 
of Domremy. She took command with sternness of 
attitude and imperialism of purpose equal to any- 
master of men in war. Most of all she demanded 
that only soldiers of clean conscience should be 
enrolled in her train. She required the freedom 
from fear provided for in confession so that no 
arm should be unnerved in battle by fear of death, 
and the displeasure of God. 

4. The Great Hope That Came to Orleans 

Orleans was the last great stronghold between 
the English-Burgundian armies and the remnant 
of the French kingdom. The Duke of Orleans, 
who was its masterful soldier, had been captured 
at Agincourt, in 1415, and remained a prisoner 
in England for twenty-five years. If Orleans fell 
it was known that the enemy would roll over 
France and sweep the kingdom out of existence. 

According to the Orleans chronicler, at the time 
when they received the first news of the appear- 
ance at Chinon of La Pucelle, ''All the citizens 
and dwellers in Orleans were come to such straits 
by reason of the besiegers that they knew not to 
whom to turn for help, save to God alone." 

In the midst of this despair, some adventurers 
were admitted through the gates who told the 
wonderful story of a girl from Lorraine who had 
power from God. No one could ridicule such a 
source of relief when it was their only hope. 



THE PROMISED SIGN 83 

Dunois, commander of the garrison, in order to 
satisfy the people, sent two officers to see if there 
could be any reliance in this strange new hope. 
When they returned, the starving people gathered 
around them and heard that through a wonderful 
Maid, surely God was coming to help them. 

5. The Beginnimg of the Sign at Orleans 

La Pucelle was an unsurpassed organizer of 
fragments into solidified purpose. She was going 
to Orleans as the instrument and emissary of 
God and her army must be god-like in both heart 
and equipment. Religious enthusiasm operating 
as patriotism has never known anything like this 
unless it was so under Cromwell. 

Her first act at Blois was to send the summons 
she had dictated to the University professor at 
Poitiers, ordering the English to abandon the 
siege of Orleans. 

Some of the characteristic interests in it are 
here related. 

Addressing the King of England and others in 
their order, she says, "Do right to the King of 
Heaven. Surrender to La Pucelle sent hither by 
God, for the Dauphin of France, the keys of all 
the good cities that you have taken and violated 
in France. She is ready to make peace if you will 
do right, and set free the kingdom of France. 

**To you, archers, companions of war, gentle 
and valiant, and to all others who are before the 



84 JOAN OF ARC 

cities of Orleans, in the name of God, begone into 
your own land ; or else expect news from La Pn- 
celle, who will see you presently, to your very 
great dismay. 

"King of England, I am chief of war, . . . 
sent of God, hand to hand to thrust you out of 
France. ... If you will not believe this word 
from God by the Maid, when we meet you we will 
fall on you with such a hunting-cry as has not 
been heard in France for a thousand years. 

''Duke of Bedford, the Maid prays that you 
will not brave your destruction. If you do right 
to her call, in the name of God, you may yet come 
into her company, when the French shall have 
performed the grandest deed that ever was done 
for Christianity." 

Two of Jeanne's heralds were sent to convey 
the message to the English camp but the English 
soldiers received it with outbursts of both deris- 
ion and rage. Contrary to the rules of war, the 
messengers were held under threat of being 
burnt, but this was not carried out. 

A bright little glimpse of the Maid, when she 
went to Selles to prepare for the campaign, is to 
be seen in a letter written by Guy and Andre de 
Laval to their mother and grandmother. Being 
kinsmen of the King's favorite. La Tremouille, 
the widowed mother expected them to have a 
place of honor next to the King. But when they 
reached Selles they met La Pucelle and a place 



THE PROMISED SIGN 85 

by the King was no longer to them the place of 
honor. 

*'To see her and hear her," they wrote, "she 
seems altogether divine." 

They begged to become part of the military 
guard attending her, but Joan had learned of 
their mother's desire for them to be with the 
King, and she advised them to wait and attend 
him at his coronation in Eheims. 

*'But," Guy wrote in telling of their disappoint- 
ment, ''God can never choose me to do this, and 
not go with her, and my brother says the same, 
as does also my Lord of Alengon. ' ' 

In this letter he also said, "I saw her mount, 
all in white armor, except her head, on a great 
white charger. . . . Then she turned toward the 
church door, which was close by, and said in a 
pleasant woman's voice, 'You priests and church- 
men, make a procession and prayers to God.' 
She then rode on, crying, 'Forward! Forward!' 
her furled banner being carried by a comely 
page." 

6. The Warrior Maid 

La Pucelle insisted vigorously on the expulsion 
of all evil agencies from the camp and that it 
should be purified of its immoral conditions. An 
altar was erected where all religious devotions 
should be performed, and she required the sever- 
est discipline of religious righteousness among 
all the men. Mounted upon a large white charger, 



86 JOAN OF ARC 

and clad in white armor, surrounded by a bril- 
liant array of knights and officers, she marched 
forth upon her historic way. Waving her ban- 
ners, she chanted the Veni Creator, until the sa- 
cred strain was taken up by the whole army. 

The three days' march to Orleans was like a 
triumphal procession. The arrival in sight of 
the town was hailed by the starving citizens as 
indeed deliverance from heaven. But the besieg- 
ers had been given time, in the long delay, and 
they used it in proving their belief in the genuine- 
ness of the Maid's mission, by developing the 
most elaborate system of siege. There was not a 
single point not well guarded and strongly en- 
trenched. 

One of the examiners at Poitiers, knowing the 
military ring around the city, said, '*It would be 
a famous exploit to pass enough food through 
such a force to relieve Orleans." 

She replied, *'By my Martin-baton we shall do 
it with ease! Not an Englishman will stir or 
make any show of hindering us." 

She proposed to send sixty wagons of supplies 
and hundreds of oxen, cows, sheep and swine di- 
rectly through the strongest forces that were in- 
vesting Orleans. Her military commanders were 
dumbfounded. Word was got through to Dunois, 
the commander in the city, and he returned the 
opinion that it was too rash a plan to be thought 
of. But La Pucelle refused to listen to prudence 
or caution. The commanders were in a quan- 



THE PROMISED SIGN 87 

dary. They were tinder strict orders to obey 
her every command. As they could not change 
her mind they decided to mislead her. She did 
not know the way to the approaches of the city, 
so they led the way to the approach most suited 
to their own judgment. 

The march up to the city was vision enough for 
any imagination. Joan carried her standard with 
all the inspiring beauty conceivable for the ' ' An- 
gelic Maid, ' ' as the soldiers called her. Her quick 
glance and instantly-acting judgment allowed no 
detail of her plans to be abused. In an imperious 
way, emphasizing her decrees against evil things, 
she ordered all immoral campfollowers to be 
driven away. 

The army marched to the sacred chants and 
the sounds of song mingled with the low of cattle 
and the shouts of the herders. But the Maid 
heard only one voice, in the midst of her enor- 
mous responsibility. That voice was continually 
her comforter and her guide. 

"Go on, go on!" it said, ''Jeanne, daughter of 
God; I will be with thee and be thy help." 

As in echoing chorus the chanted verses of a 
thousand songs surrounded her like clouds of 
glory. It was the profound religious cry of 
France for pardon and pity, for rest and peace. 
The soldiers who had been beaten till they had 
lost all faith and hope looked upon her saintly fig- 
ure moving on and on before them, and they felt 
the power of divine might against the evil that 



88 JOAN OF ARC 

had crushed the people for a hundred years. And 
yet that form of hope before them was the very 
name of weakness known as woman, and this one 
little more than a child. But something in her 
was the making of the ages. She claimed the right 
that was might, before which the greed for power 
and the lust for conquest must fall. 

The peasant maid realized for them that the 
fight for man was irresistible when it was a fight 
for God. Prom their despairing souls a great cry 
of renewed faith arose as they sang the song of 
the Holy Ghost: 

"Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, God, 
Clothe us with love divine ; hold up our wasted strength with 

living might. 
Be Thou our guide : our helper in the midst of fear, 
Drive far the enemy and give us peace." 

7. Captains Afraid to Trust the Military Wisdom 
of a Girl 

When the army of relief arrived at the circle 
of the enemy's camps, Jeanne discovered that she 
had been misled by her officers. But she had no 
need to punish them for their offense. Any one 
could now see that they had come to the worst 
place. As if to make matters still more ill-timed, 
the weather had become wild and stormy. The 
only way to get into the city from this place was 
in barges up the river. Still worse, the stream 




THE ENTRANCE OF JEANNE D'ARC INTO ORLEANS 
A Window in the Cathedral of Orleans 



THE PROMISED SIGN 89 

was now very low and the heavy wind dead 
against them. 

Some citizens, including the commander, Du- 
nois, came down the river to them. La Pucelle 
met them at the shore. 

Singling out the commander, she cried out in a 
rehuking voice, **Are you he who advised us to 
come by this side of the river, instead of straight 
through the English camps? If we had come as 
I ordered, we could have got in the relief with 
much less difficulty." 

Dunois tried to excuse himself but she impa- 
tiently responded, "By my Martin-baton, the 
counsel of God is wiser and safer than yours. 
You thought to deceive me, but you yourselves are 
deceived. I have brought you the best succor that 
ever knight or city had, for it is the succor of the 
King of Heaven, not given for love of me, but of 
God's own good will, who has had pity on Or- 
leans.*' 

The military council now acknowledged her su- 
perior plan, and everything was moved on up the 
river six miles. There they found that the wind 
had changed, that the water from recent rains in 
the upper valley was now deepening the river, 
and that, true to her prophecy, the English army 
made no attempt to attack her guard of troops. 
The supplies were loaded upon barges, pushed 
across the river, driven far around the strongly 
fortified bastile of Saint Loup and on into the 
starving city by the gate of Burgundy. 



90 JOAN OF ARC 

8. Entrance into the City 

The people of Orleans had besought their offi- 
cers, who had gone out to meet the Angelic Maid, 
to bring her back with them. The officers, show- 
ing how well the army was now organized and 
committed to her cause, said that the people and 
defenders in the city were in present need of her 
more than her army. Accordingly with a body 
guard of two hundred lancers, pages, her brother 
Pierre, and numerous personal attendants, she 
entered the barge and was taken safely past the 
bastile of Saint Loup, where the English did not 
even make a demonstration of attack upon her. 
Whether it was from religious fear, or because 
they did not regard her and her supplies worth an 
attempt, has never been clearly settled. Doubt- 
less both causes kept them within the fortress. 
However, it was the historical fact that unmo- 
lested she entered Orleans with her soldiers and 
supplies, April 30, 1429, and the beginning of a 
great epoch in the life of France was now at hand. 

Ever alert for righteous obedience to moral 
ideals, she rebuked the officers of Orleans for 
swearing, saving that they should not swear, but, 
if it seemed necessary, they might bear witness 
to any important purpose, as she did, by her Mar- 
tin-baton. And thereafter, at least in her pres- 
ence, so the officers testified, they always swore by 
their Martins. 

Thoughtful for her comfort, they tried to 



THE PROMISED SIGN 91 

avoid the people and to get her secretly into the 
city for a night of rest, after her three fatiguing 
days of travel, in which she had not taken off her 
armor. They waited nntil dark to enter the Bur- 
gundy gate. But the people heard of her coming, 
and when she rode in at eight o 'clock, the soldiers 
were lined up with a blaze of torches, and the 
masses of people, starving and suffering, crowded 
around with unceasing shouts of joy, striving 
among one another to he the first to kiss the 
ground where her horse had stepped. Her bur- 
nished armor reflected the weird lights, and they 
looked upon the shining one, thus bringing relief 
that none else could do, with the worship due an 
angel descended from heaven. Had not all the 
world abandoned them, till this one came, in the 
name of God with food for the starving people! 
Who can imagine the feelings of the wonderful 
Maid as she looked into the hunger-bitten faces of 
thousands crying to her as to a saint ! No dream 
of the Domremy fields could equal this reality, as 
mothers lifted their children that they might be 
blessed in seeing this daughter of God. 

High over her head she waved her banner of 
freedom, cleaving a way through the shouting 
people, crying in clear tones to them at every step, 
*' my people, hope thou in God ! All is well with 
you ! Have all a good hope in God. Have confi- 
dence in our Lord, and you shall be free! God 
has sent me to deliver Orleans." 

What else could they do than believe in that 



92 JOAN OF ABC 

beautiful white vision of faith, hope and love! 

Slowly the soldiers, lancers and attendants ten- 
derly pressed back the crowding throngs to make 
way for La Pucelle. Then the crush to be near 
her was so fervent that a torch was bent over 
against the banner and its fringe caught fire. 
Jeanne seized the flame and crushed it in her bare 
hands. Everything was marvelous. It was all a 
miracle. Why should they not believe that no 
other girl in all history could have done this, ex- 
cept God be with her ! 

Besides the recorded testimony of witnesses, a 
writer who saw her enter Orleans describes the 
scenes with great minuteness. 

''All felt greatly comforted," he wrote, ''and, 
as it were, already unbesieged, through the divine 
virtue of which they had heard in this simple 
maid; whom they regarded right lovingly, both 
men and women, and likewise the little children. ' ' 

9. The Feast of Honor and the Company of a 

Child 

At last this wonderful procession came to the 
home of Jacques Boucher, who was chancellor and 
treasurer of Orleans and whose wife was one of 
the most respected and beloved women in the city. 
There she was lodged with her attendants who 
were under the management of her two brothers. 
Her hostess helped her out of her armor into suit- 
able clothing and then led her to the dining hall 



THE PROMISED SIGN 93 

where a great banquet was prepared with all the 
notable people there, but Jeanne took only a small 
cup of water and wine with some pieces of toasted 
bread, and then asked to retire to her room. We 
may suppose that she had not come to a feast, 
and, in a city where many were starving, she 
could not sit at a table spread for a banquet. But, 
these people, though their desires were no doubt 
good, could not understand how much more she 
loved those she had seen in the streets, that royal 
display was not in harmony with her mission or 
her moral law. 

As she passed out of the room she noticed a 
wondering child looking wistfully at her from the 
door. It was the eight-year-old daughter of the 
hostess, little Karlotte. La Pucelle had only one 
request to make, and this was that the little child 
might be her companion while she remained in 
Orleans. Her war was not for those who had 
already lived but for those yet to live in the need 
of a better way. Of such are the Kingdom of 
Heaven, who have not yet received their inheri- 
tance, because of the willfulness of men. She 
could not renew her strength from men of power- 
ful self-assertion and great will, for her faith in 
the might of right things was, as with these little 
ones, in the Maker and Preserver of Life more 
abundantly. 



CHAPTER VI 
FREEDOM TO THE CITY OF ORLEANS 

1. The Sign Given in the Miracle That Was 

Promised 

Befoee Orleans in military camp was tlie most 
renowned army then in the world, and of the most 
victorious nation. God had prospered them as 
they verily believed. But now, confidence as to 
being the favored of a conquering God began to 
fail, and the assurance of the besiegers of their 
righteousness as a mighty power fled from them 
like an actual spirit, and entered the French. The 
whole city went with the Maid to the Cathedral 
of Saint Croix to return thanks for the marvelous 
goodness of God. The chronicles of that time 
say, "Not one returned to his home from that 
service but that did feel within him the strength 
of ten men.** But the English did not long enter- 
tain the thought that God had deserted them to 
enter the souls of Orleans. Their explanation be- 
came a settled conviction that the devil was in- 
spiring their enemies, and for the time being was 
getting the best of God. 

The flower of the English armies was there 
safely housed in fortresses known as boulevards 

94 



FREEDOM TO THE CITY 95 

situated at about even distances around the city. 
To be sure they had let the devil's emissary get 
into the city with a supply of food and reenforcing 
troops, but, when the Maid's army came and tried 
to break through they would capture it, and that 
would be the end of the devil's experiment with 
the Maid and of Orleans. 

The head men in the army and government of 
Orleans were glad to get the supplies, and they 
welcomed the enthusiasm aroused by La Pucelle, 
but they were calloused military men, and they 
could not feel either faith or interest in the Maid, 
except as she could serve their purpose. They 
needed assistance and when it met their ap- 
proval, they would accept the service either of 
devil or of God. Faith derived from the con- 
sciousness that eternal right is infinite might was 
in deadly conflict with the personal will derived 
from the reasoning of individual interest. The 
natural history is self-evident. Life in nature was 
the vital impulse to organized form adjusted to 
environment. Out of this, intelligence arose and 
it formed the animal will. As human intelligence 
realizes the intelligence of the universe, faith 
forms the will. So the faith-will is in conflict with 
the self-will. 

They deceived her in every possible way in or- 
der to satisfy the people that they were obeying 
her and yet to have their own way. La Pucelle 
saw through it all. She was much grieved, but 
she accepted their treachery merely as one of the 



96 JOAN OF ARC 

obstacles, and despite their blunders, led them to 
victory. 

Black suspicion with the credulity of ignorance 
was rapidly eating into the English lust for con- 
quest and breaking the will of the besiegers. They 
talked among themselves how impossible it was to 
war against Beelzebub and his devils. 

The Duke of Bedford, who was conducting the 
siege, said in a letter to King Henry VI, ''Your 
people, assembled before Orleans in great num- 
bers, have received a heavy blow which seems to 
have fallen from the skies. This check has come 
to them, in my opinion, from the foolish thoughts 
and unreasonable fears which have been brought 
upon them by a disciple or a limb of the enemy, 
called the Maid, who has used false enchantments 
and sorcery.'* 

Those who had sought for a sign, both at Chi- 
non and Poitiers, were now given one that must 
have been indisputable, even if it was not convinc- 
ing. The great day came on May 4, when four 
thousand of the Maid's soldiers, coming by the 
way which she had first ordered that they should 
come, marched on into the city, about midday, 
without a single move by any of the English gar- 
risons to prevent them. Thus was the proof given 
that had been promised the doubting doctors, the 
miracle was performed that the Voices had prom- 
ised the Maid, and the mission of the daughter 
of God was being fulfilled. These historical facts 
may be explained in most any way to suit the ex- 



FREEDOM TO THE CITY 97 

plainer 's fancy, but nothing explains away tlie 
demonstration of a woman's faith that eternal 
right is infinite might, as a normal process of 
man's work. 



2. The Challenge to the Ordeal of Baal and God 

Lord Talbot was regarded as one of the most 
successful English commanders. He saw that 
something must be done to get the fear out of his 
soldiers. He did all he could to revile the Maid 
as a wanton and a witch. He derided the French 
as being under the sorcery of a common camp 
woman. He sent her word that he would soon 
capture her when he would burn her as a devil 
from hell. This word-war was as full of possible 
consequence as any series of battles. It is in good 
evidence that human battles may first be lost or 
won in the regions of mind. It may be some ex- 
planation of the long belief in the justice of duels. 

When the messengers brought the worst of abu- 
sive challenges daring her to show her Satanic 
power, this returned challenged was issued: **Go 
back, ' ' she said to the heralds, * * and to Lord Tal- 
bot say this for me : * Come out of your bastiles 
with your host, and I will come with mine; if I 
beat you, go in peace out of France ; if you beat 
me, burn me, according to your desire.' " 

In the afternoon following the unmolested en- 
trance of the relieving troops. La Purcelle was 
weary and she retired for rest and sleep. Con- 



98 JOAN OF ARC 

trary to her orders, some of her over-enthusiastic 
soldiers organized a sortie to capture the fortress 
of Saint Loup, but Talbot, the English com- 
mander, repulsed the attack and drove the French 
in a rout back to the city. 

Meanwhile, La Pucelle had sprung up from her 
sleep, rushed out to the page in waiting, and, shak- 
ing him vigorously, said, ''0 blood-guilty youth, 
why didst thou not warn me that French blood is 
being shed. Bring my horse ! ' ' 

She clad herself in her armor, seized her ban- 
ner, and galloped away to the Burgundy gate. 
There she met some of the wounded being brought 
in. A chronicler present wrote of this, that, for 
a moment, she reeled on her horse, faint at the 
sight of blood. Then she put spurs to her horse, 
turned back the fugitives she met, and with a 
great shout flung herself and her swaying banner 
into the midst of the madly fighting men. 

The English fell back as if every wave of the 
banner was the stroke of a sword. The French 
flung themselves forward with shouts of praise to 
God. The fort was taken by storm and all that 
threw down their arms were in mercy spared. 
The next day being the Feast of the Ascension, 
the Maid's army kept Holy Day in Orleans. 

The next day following this service, Joan led 
her soldiers against the bastile of the Augustines, 
and the soldiers went in platoons, as if from 
waves of her banner, over the defenses, driving 
the English like sheep before them. 



FREEDOM TO THE CITY 99 

3. The Power of Faith in the Mind of Man 

The great stronghold of Tournelles was now in 
turn ready to be assailed. According to the war- 
science of the time, it had been made impossible to 
assault. The Orleans generals held a council and 
decided that they dare not attack Tournelles un- 
til they had reenforcements from the King. This 
word was brought to Joan and she sent back the 
statement, ''You have taken your council, I have 
received mine. ' ' 

At break of day she was up and on the way to 
lead the assault. On arriving at the Burgundy 
gate, she found it closed by order of the Council 
of Generals. 

**You are doing a bad deed,'* she cried to the 
keeper of the gate, ''and my soldiers shall pass." 

The gate was opened. Joan galloped on with 
her men to the troops that had been left to hold 
the fortifications captured the day before. They 
rallied to her ensign and rushed on to the assault. 
That day would decide the fate of Orleans. 

Meanwhile, the officers of the army in the city 
had been informed that La Pucelle was leading 
her troops to the assault on Tournelles. Though 
believing it to be impossible and that it was a fatal 
blunder, they hurried to her help. 

This may be noted as far more commendable 
than has happened in many a crisis in the story of 
Americans. The conscientious objector, and no 
one has ever found any other kind of obstruction- 



100 JOAN OF ARC 



ist, is too conscientious ever to help remedy a 
blunder, no matter how important the need, when 
made by any one who is not acting according to 
the objector's judgment. This individualizing of 
will as supreme for the sake of party methods and 
personal decision is the soul of anarchy and the 
invariable maker of despotism in any group, so- 
cial, political or religious, for peace or war. 

During the awful century of bloody war that 
had bled France to hopelessness, for then more 
than seventy years, there never had been such 
valorous energy and self-sacrificing heroism, as 
was given wherever eye could see the banner of 
the Maid of Orleans. 

Down into the ditches went the French with 
sword and lance and mace. Up the walls they 
swarmed on scaling ladders in the face of show- 
ering arrows, lances and hatchets. 

She spurred her horse forward into the thickest 
of the fight, shouting to her men, **0n and on to 
victory for our Lord.'* 

With great shouts the English led by Gladsdale 
rushed out against her, calling her all the vile 
names they could think of. La Pucelle heard him 
and with her standard raised aloft rode down upon 
him at full speed. 

*' Soldiers," she cried so that her clarion voice 
was heard over all the tumult of battle, ''fear 
not. Strike in among them boldly in God's name." 

She dismounted in the midst of the fighting 



FREEDOM TO THE CITY 101 

mass, striking furiously with the flat of her sword 
upon the enemies' heads and waving her banner 
high as she could reach. Now it was down, then 
up again, swaying round and round, as the center 
of all the fiercest wage of war. 

4. The Banner Fallen at the Walls 

All through the long hot day of May 7th, the 
banner of the Maid of Orleans was swung back 
and forth at the front of the death struggle by 
her tireless hands. In the afternoon Joan sent an 
arrow over the walls into the English ranks, bear- 
ing a note, demanding for the third and last time 
that they surrender. Captain Gladsdale climbed 
the walls and, waving the note before him, shout- 
ed so she could hear, *'News from the harlot of 
the Armagnacs!'' 

She began weeping at this insult and then be- 
came comforted as she called on the King of 
Heaven to clear her mind of his evil words. Have 
you heard a gossip slander a good name! "Who 
has not? It is the poisonous thinking of an im- 
moral mind striving to have a congenial world. 

Dunois, the commander-in-chief, was much dis- 
couraged with the day's work and word came to 
her that he was about to order the assault to 
cease. She hurried her horse with all speed to the 
commander and implored him not to give up the 
fight. He would not answer. Turning her horse, 
she unfurled her flag, saying, "Watch my stand- 



102 JOAN OF ARC 

ard; when it readies the walls, the fortress will 
be ours." 

Dunois had become weary of the unavailing 
struggle. He recalled the judgment of all his mili- 
tary associates that the Towers could not be taken 
by assault. But he could not order the soldiers 
back while the banner of God was going with all 
the speed of the white horse toward the English 
walls. Such commands would be unheard. The 
soldiers were following like a great human wave 
the flowing banner and the call of the wonderful 
woman. 

It was turning late in the afternoon of what 
seemed to be a hopeless day for Orleans and 
France, as she led this final terrific assault. ^'On, 
soldiers, on," were the words that reached the 
men like the cry of a mother to her sons. *'In the 
name of God, the victory is ours." The weari- 
ness of the long dreadful day's struggle was gone. 
The power of faith gave the renewed strength of 
ten men to every man. 

Reaching the moat, she sprang from her horse 
and crossed safely over, waving her banner and 
calling victory to the soldiers still struggling to 
break through or to climb over the ramparts. 

Before her, against the wall, was an empty 
scaling ladder from which the men had been 
driven by a shower of stones. She went up to it 
with the intention of climbing it herself when it 
was suddenly thrown down by someone of the 
enemy from above. Thrusting her banner into 



FREEDOM TO THE CITY 103 

the hands of an attendant, she raised the ladder 
back to its place by her own strength. Then she 
took the banner and began to climb, when a heavy 
bolt from a crossbow struck her in the shoulder 
near the neck. The blow struck her backward to 
the ground, where she lay as one dead. A fierce 
volley of arrows and stones drove all the soldiers 
back across the moat, while loud shouts of victory 
were heard all around the Towers. 

5. The Wounded Warrior 

The English saw her fall from the ladder, and 
they believed this meant the end of resistance for 
Orleans. To capture her was better than any 
other victory. They rushed forth to get her body. 
But Gamaches, one of the knights of her body 
guard, sprang to her defense with all fury in his 
battle-ax. He beat back the assailants until the 
soldiers could rally to her rescue. They drove the 
shouting victors back and Gamaches, though sore- 
ly wounded, carried her across the moat. Then 
she was placed upon a horse and removed to the 
rear where she could receive proper care. 

Doulon, who was present, wrote a noteworthy 
account describing the feelings of the rough men 
around her. The arrow had gone through her 
shoulder near the neck, and it was necessary to 
turn down her clothing to stop the blood in the 
long ugly wound. ''But the purity of her soul, 
and the sight of her blood shed for her country, ' ' 



104 JOAN OF ARC 

said Doulon, writing of the scene, ''clothed her 
with such sanctity in her nakedness that an im- 
pure thought was impossible.** 

The soldiers looked upon her as a saint, and 
yet, like a child that she was, she wept at the sight 
of blood, but was brave enough to draw out the 
arrow with her own hand, and to forget her pain 
in the peril of her cause. 

Let it be noted here again that Joan had no su- 
perstitions. Friends crowded around her trying 
to touch her wounds with special charms they car- 
ried. She cried out for them not to do so. For 
what this was to them she had nothing to say, but 
for her it was a sin. God did not work His bless- 
ings through inappropriate or irrelevant things. 
She preferred a dressing of olive oil, though she 
cried like a child with the pain as they dressed the 
ragged and dangerous wound. 

The French were now fast being overpowered 
and in many places were in full retreat. She in- 
quired for her banner. Doulon had seen it lying 
in the moat where it had fallen from the ladder. 
With a few brave soldiers he ran back to secure 
it for her. Realizing what was happening, she 
mounted Gamache's horse and rode up to them 
as they came out of the ditch with her banner. 
The knight handed it to her, a gust of wind caught 
its folds and made it stream out toward the walls 
as if pointed by the hand of God. A shout arose 
among the soldiers. "The Maid is restored to 
life ! She beckons us to come on ! " and they came 



FREEDOM TO THE CITY 105 

on like a returning wave of the sea. The English 
were stricken with fear. They had seen her cut 
through by an English bolt. They had seen her 
fall. They had shouted the news of her death 
throughout all the ramparts and towers. Here she 
was back again. Her banner streaming toward 
their walls. She could not be killed! She had 
been restored to life ! Back of her the oncoming 
wave of shouting soldiers witnessed her resur- 
rection. Flesh and blood could not withstand 
such miracles. The strength fled from their weak- 
ened arms. They were unable to draw a bow- 
string or hurl a stone. Every soldier, long there- 
after, French, English and Burgundians, as each 
told the story wherever he went, declared that he 
saw legions of countless numbers coming on earth 
and in the clouds. They saw the smoke and flame 
of cannon and the flash of avenging swords filling 
the air and sky. However it was, in that strange 
hour was won the most amazing victory in the re- 
gions of mind. Perhaps it may be a symbol of 
how the self-system of evil goes into chaos before 
the might of right. The self-made will can not 
fight for evil as the faith-made mind can fight for 
social justice. 

Byron uses her heroic figure, seen here, for one 
of his striking contrasts in English Bards and 
Scotch Eeviewers, saying, 

"First in the ranks, see Joan of Are advance, 
The scourge of England and the boast of France !" 



106 JOAN OF ARC 

6. The Banner Over the Walls 

One of tlie soldiers with her, writing of the bat- 
tle, says that, as they fought around her, close to 
the ditch at the walls, a white cloud was seen 
floating around her standard. At that moment 
she cried out, *'Into the fort, children; in God's 
name the fort is ours. ' ' 

*'And never," says this writer, "was seen flocks 
of birds lighting on a hedge as thick as were the 
French climbing up the walls." 

*'That night," he continues, describing how 
Joan rode back victorious as she had foretold, 
''all the bells of the city began ringing, and the 
people were shouting their praise and thanks to 
God." 

They formed a procession in gratitude for 
God's mercy, and, excepting only for brief inter- 
vals, that procession has been continued and has 
celebrated the deliverance that came with the 
Maid, every year through all the changes of now 
nearly five hundred years. 

Several writers of that time tell us that it was 
near sunset as she led the final assault upon the 
stronghold called *'The Towers." The English 
soldiers were probably the best in Europe but 
they could not fight what they could not kill. They 
fled in terror panic-stricken from the tireless sol- 
diers of the woman. All testify that above the 
tumult of battle could be heard her cry, "In the 
name of God, the victory is ours." 



FREEDOM TO THE CITY 107 

In a mass, the terrified soldiers driven out of 
the forts crowded upon the bridge across the 
Loire. Sir William Gladsdale, the commander 
who had reviled her in such vulgar language and 
called her the harlot of the Armagnacs, was among 
them. 

*' Surrender !' * she cried to him. *' Surrender 
that I may save your life, for I have great pity on 
your soul.'* 

But he hurled back a vile epithet at her and 
would not heed her mercy. Then the bridge went, 
down, the heavy armor took all to the bottom, and 
the free waters of the Loire closed over them for- 
ever. *'At this," the chronicler writes, ''the 
Maid wept bitterly and would not be comforted 
for the loss of so many good men, who should 
have been Christians together, for the rescue of 
the Savior's tomb and the redemption of the Holy 
Land." 

In such wasteful wilfullness have many multi- 
tudes of good men been lost to the unhappy world. 
Intelligence has not yet been developed enough to 
banish the reign of wills and give place to the 
peace of faith. 

Southey has her say in her note to Gladsdale : 

"That gracious God 
Sends me the minister of mercy forth, 
Sends me to save this ravaged realm pf France, 
To England friendly as to all the world, 
Foe only to the great blood-guilty ones, 
The masters and the murderers of Mankind." 



108 JOAN OF ARC 

So she had been called in the vast history of 
things to suffer that others might understand, and 
she at last gave all to the stake for the honor of 
her faith in God as the personal sanction of the 
Almighty Universe to the inalienable rights and 
duties of humanity. 

7. A Warrior Uninterested in the Glory of War 

Though Joan had been in battle twelve hours 
and for several hours badly wounded, she would 
not quit the field till her wounded soldiers were all 
cared for, and this was not until long after mid- 
night. She had eaten nothing all day and before 
retiring to rest she took only a few pieces of toast 
dipped in half water and half wine. 

Twenty-five years later, during one of the in- 
vestigations, into her character, the sworn testi- 
mony of thirty persons, who were present and fa- 
miliar with the conduct of La Pucelle, was writ- 
ten down, and is still preserved, in which the rec- 
ord of the depositions says, ''And in this they all 
agreed, that they had never perceived by any 
means whatever that the said Joan set to the glory 
of her own valor the deeds that she had done, but 
rather ascribed everjrthing to God, and, as far 
as she was able, prevented the people from hon- 
oring her, or giving her the glory; for she pre- 
ferred to be alone and solitary rather than to be 
in the company of men, unless that was neces- 
sary for the purposes of war.'' 



FREEDOM TO THE CITY 109 

Those who supposed that this wonderful child 
of faith was either mystic or visionary or super- 
stitious will find all the testimony to witness that 
she was practical, reasonable and normal beyond 
all the surrounding experiences of life. Joan 
never showed the slightest trait of fanaticism or 
bigotry. When she was asked to lay on her hands 
to heal the sick, she answered, * * Touch them your- 
selves. Your hands are just as good as mine.*' 
This is the democracy of genuine faith in a rea- 
sonable world. She was nowhere looking for 
freaks, she had no whims, there is no record of 
any capricious will. The individual will in its 
drive for success strikes at opposing objects as 
does a snake, leaps like a wolf upon its prey, and 
quails in cowardice before the darkness of every 
unknown way, but faith moves on, facing faith- 
fully the far dream-shores, even though the jour- 
ney must pause to suffer the judgment and sat- 
isfy the wills of men at the stake and the cross. 

8. The Moimtain Removed 

On Sunday, May 8th, the English captains in 
the remaining fortifications decided to make a 
final stand. They came from all the remaining 
boulevards and drew themselves up in battle ar- 
ray. The French soldiers all came out through 
the near gates and formed their battle lines before 
the walls. But the English gave no signal for the 
attack. 



110 JOAN OF ARC 

The Maid with her banner rode up and down be- 
fore her line, speaking words of pious encourage- 
ment to her men. Then she ordered the priests 
to erect an altar where Mass could be said. While 
the priests were busy with the Mass, and she was 
deep in the devotions, without turning toward the 
foe, she suddenly waved her banner and shouted, 
"Look and tell me if the English have their faces 
to us or their backs." 

**The English are retreating," was the answer- 
ing shout, as the soldiers rose from their knees to 
look. 

" In God 's name, let them go, ' ' she replied. * * It 
is not my Lord's will that we should fight them on 
the Lord's day." 

Then was the name and fame of Joan of Arc 
immortal in the history of the world. Forever 
more it was to be high before Mankind like her 
banner as a vision of faith and hope for relief 
against the oppressor in the name of God and his 
social universe. 

Writers who were there say that in the pres- 
ence of this victory her face was transfigured till 
it shone like the vision of an angel. 

Shakespeare in his Henry VI puts these words 
into Lord Talbot's mouth, who for the first time 
had seen defeat : 

"My thoughts are whirled like a potters wheel; 
I know not where I am, nor what I do : 
A witch, by fears not force, like Hannibal, 
Drives back our troops and conquers as she lists." 



FREEDOM TO THE CITY 111 

The whole civilized world was now ringing with 
her fame. Thoughtful people, realizing that some- 
thing of the most far-reaching consequence had 
taken place in defeating treason, violence and 
wrong, began to hope that God was truly appear- 
ing in the affairs of man and ordering the right- 
eousness of the world. 

The lowly people around her were giving her 
the reverence due to a saint and the proud were 
heaping honors upon her as the glory due to a 
mighty captain of victorious armies. She tried to 
avoid it all, praying to God for protection against 
all such flattery and idolatry. 

An archbishop, through whom she had been 
seeking the righteousness and peace of his office, 
said to her, ** Never was seen in any chronicles of 
the world the like of the deeds that you do. In 
no book can such wonders be read.'* 

In humble negation of personal merit, and may- 
be in contempt of *Hhe little learning" that makes 
men mad, she replied, **My Lord hath a book of 
wonders in which no learned man has ever read. ' ' 

9. The Harvest of Envy and Treason at the 
Castle of Loches 

La Pucelle had completed her mission to Or- 
leans. Monday morning she gave her blue satin 
hat to her noble hostess as a keepsake, kissed lit- 
tle Karlotte farewell, and, while the priests were 
saying masses in the churches for their dead, she 



112 JOAN OF ARC 

rode away to Balois, preliminary to a meeting 
with the King at Tours. 

Dunois and many of the officers, nobles and 
knights of Orleans, escorted her in a triumphant 
cavalcade to the appointed place of meeting. As 
she saw the King awaiting her, she rode ahead 
holding aloft her banner, till she came np to him, 
when she stopped and bowed low her head. The 
King took off his chapeau and came up to her with 
uncovered head. He caressed her on the cheek 
and bestowed upon her the badge of the Royal 
Lily of France. 

The people were wild with joy and hailed her 
as the greatest saint since Mary, the mother of 
Christ. But the wavering King could never be 
sure. A poisonous sneer had come into his ear 
from Tremouille. A pious doubt had been sug- 
gested by the crafty Archbishop of Rheims, and 
the English, to save themselves from some of the 
dishonor of the defeat, were loudly proclaiming 
everywhere that the French King was profiting 
by the sorceries of a vile witch. All the politi- 
cians, courtiers and hangers-on about the court 
helped to defame her wherever they could, because 
she was no friend of theirs. The officers belittled 
all she had done, and in some instances, boldly 
took it to themselves that they had succeeded de- 
spite her crazy plans. The snake is never a slan- 
derer and the hyena is never a hypocrite. The 
slanderer and hypocrite alone inhabit regions 



FREEDOM TO THE CITY 113 

where they may live lower than any nature-made 
thing. 

To counteract this rising tide of hate toward 
her, a mild protest in defense of her was printed 
at Lyons only six days after the siege of Orleans 
had been raised. This brief commendation was 
written by Jean de Gerson, known as *'the most 
Christian Doctor." 

In characterizing her he said, **She seeks 
neither worldly honors nor worldly men ; she ab- 
hors seditions, revenges, hatreds and vanities ; she 
lives in the spirit of prayer, in works of grace, in 
holiness and justice. She employs no surprises, 
no deceits, and she has in view no hope of gain.'' 
She is seen to be very firm in the faith; for she 
exposes her body to wounds without taking any 
extraordinary precautions to save herself. "War- 
riors obey her willingly, and risk the dangers of 
war without fearing the disgrace which would fall 
on them were they beaten, having a woman to lead 
them. She clothes herself as a warrior to fight 
the foes of justice, to defend her country, proving 
that God can, when he will, confound the mighti- 
est by the hand of a woman." 

Gerson wrote from the monastery at Lyons ad- 
monishing the people to be faithful to one who 
could be likened only to the saints of scriptural 
times, and Gelu, archbishop of Embrum, warned 
the people that to fail her was to betray the voice 
of God. 



CHAPTER VII 
THE PEACE OF A PACIFIST KING 

1. The Wills and Their Ways 

Jeanne wanted to take the army at once on to 
Rheims but the military management refused to 
consider such haste until the valley of the Loire 
was cleared of English troops. 

Charles retired in indolent peace to Loches and 
took with him Jeanne and all her company. The 
Maid of Orleans was an object of the greatest love 
and veneration by all around her, but the King 
left the management of all his military affairs in 
the hands of his officers. Such things were not a 
woman's work and Jeanne was helpless. ''I have 
but a year and a little more to live," she implored 
of him, ''and in that time there is much to do," 
but the King was satisfied. 

In a few weeks all the army that had flocked to 
her standard went to pieces, and the officers were 
struggling with the problem of soldiers for the 
sometime purpose of driving the English from the 
regions of the Loire. 

Jeanne did not like the court nor the presence 
of officers, and she spent most of her time with 
the priests and the common people who loved her 
so well. 

114 



PEACE OF A PACIFIST KING 115 

The Abbot of Talmont had been one of her ex- 
aminers at Poitiers, and he held her in great re- 
spect. One day in riding out with her, he thought 
it time to reproach her for allowing so much rev- 
erance, that amounted almost to worship, from 
the people. The common folks knelt at the way- 
side as she passed, they kissed her hands and her 
feet, they were happy to touch her horse as it 
passed. 

''Does it become the Maid," he asked, **to suf- 
fer such honors to be paid her? Ought she not," 
he argued, ''really to guard herself against the 
reverence of these simple people, that might eas- 
ily become idolatry f " 

Jeanne was sorely perplexed and grieved at 
such a thing. She did not know how to repulse the 
love of the people. 

"In truth," she replied, weeping, "I know not 
how to keep me, unless God will keep me." In 
that reply is condensed the entire gospel of right- 
eousness. It is the experience of every one who 
has tried to live the will of self. It is the mean- 
ing of faith in a divine universe. 

The Abbot says that he was silenced, and he 
used her statement in such fervent appeals to 
righteousness and patriotism in her name that it 
became a famous saying, and it is still on the 
way of meaning for a social world. 

Here and there are little incidents along the 
way, that happened to get into the records, which 
are worth more in understanding this wonderful 



116 JOAN OF ARC 

I 
woman than any victory in battle, for it was tlie 
deadlier battle with the treason of courtiers and 
priests. One of these describes a deserter whose 
family had died in the famine and he refused to 
fight because he had nothing more to live for. 
**Look into my eyes,'* she commanded when he 
said this, "and tell me have you nothing to live 
for while there is France and God ! " A transfor- 
mation took place in the man's mind as he looked 
into those deep blue eyes. Another vision of ex- 
istence was substituted. He kissed her hand and 
fell upon his knees at her feet. Then he arose, 
bravest of the brave, as the chronicler tells it, a 
soldier of Prance and a warrior for the social jus- 
tice of God. 



2. Pearls of Great Price Before Swine 

The month of May was coming to an end. Du- 
nois came to Loches with a plan to be sanctioned 
for clearing the valley of the Loire, but Jeanne 
wanted an army to clear the way to Rheims so 
that the King could be crowned and her mission 
be finished. After that they could purge the land 
of English troops. 

One day when the King was holding his seem- 
ingly endless session of councils, this time with a 
small group of his most confidential advisers, *'all 
as by chance being good men believed in by 
Jeanne," she knocked at the council door. They 
bade her come in. She went up to the King, knelt 



PEACE OF A PACIFIST KING 117 



at his feet and embracing his knee, said, ** Noble 
DanpMn, do not bold so many long tedious coun- 
cils, but come quickly to the task that you may 
receive your crown at Rbeims." 

Dunois, who was present here, records an inci- 
dent that gives a realistic glimpse of their atti- 
tude toward her, and the possible explanation of 
her Voices as being flashes of brilliant intuition, 
so strong as to seem to her to be outside the 
senses, and thus objectively alive to the sensitive 
soul of this wonderful girl. Her description and 
explanation of her Voices, in order to be reason- 
able, had to fill out the intuitional vision with the 
forms of her own reality. In fact, the impartial 
investigator often believes he can detect evidences 
of form being given to her explanations in order 
to make them seem as reasonable to others as to 
herself. This does not in any sense imply de- 
ception, even in any attempt to clothe with reason- 
able appearances whatever seems to be the most 
reasonable in the reality of mind. 

She had risen from her knees before the King, 
as she implored him to follow up the victories and 
move on to Rheims, where he would be crowned 
the real King of France. 

Christopher de Harcourt, Grand Master of the 
Forests, asked her if her counsel had told her 
thus to dispense with their council. She answered 
promptly that it had. 

**"Will you tell us here, in the King's presence," 



118 JOAN OF ARC 

lie continued, *'in what manner your counsel 
speaks when it tells you what to do ? " 

**In my own mind,'' she answered humbly, *'I 
perceive what you wish to know and I will tell 
you. ' ' 

The King interposed kindly to save her feelings. 
"Jeanne," he asked, "does it please you thus to 
declare this thing before these witnesses'?" 

She said it did. Then she began, in much hesi- 
tation and confusion, seeking for words to convey 
her meaning, by first telling them how unhappy it 
made her to find they had so little faith in her 
message from God. So in her grief she entreated 
her Lord to tell her what to do to banish their un- 
belief. She said that always in such a prayer 
she clearly heard a voice saying, "Go on, Daugh- 
ter of God; I am with thee to help thee; go on, 
go on." 

She said that in the light that shone with these 
words she was in an ecstasy, in which she wished 
she could remain forever, and as she told of it 
there was such a look of heavenly beauty upon 
her face that the witnesses said they could never 
forget nor deny. 

But the official staff managing the military cam- 
paign would not be moved from their plan, and 
the best that even the King felt able to accomplish 
was that the Maid of Orleans should accompany 
them. Laying aside her own feelings, she ac- 
cepted the preparations made for her, and with 
all her old spirit of enthusiasm fared forth on a 



PEACE OF A PACIFIST KING 119 



task which she did not regard as in any sense ad- 
visable or within her call from God. 



3. A Godless Task to Satisfy the Will of Men 

A month after Joan had left Orleans, she re- 
turned to make it her headquarters during the 
process of driving the English out of the many 
small garrisons dotting the regions along the 
Loire. 

Soldiers, citizens and peasants all met her as a 
saint sent them directly out of heaven to be their 
deliverer and guide. Their reverence she always 
took not to herself but to her mission. Her chap- 
lains and confessors all testify that she always 
said everything was for her ministry. She al- 
ways declared that she had not come to show signs 
nor to do miracles. She had to have means to ac- 
complish purposes and reach ends. Her Lord 
merely showed her purposes and ends, and un- 
wearyingly she toiled and toiled till she had ful- 
filled the will of her Lord. All the bitter dregs 
that men emptied into her cup she drank in un- 
broken silence. But her success in great things 
caused the people to demand success, even as a 
sign in the endless procession of little things. The 
demands upon her as having strength from God 
for anything was cruel beyond description. As 
she could do anything, she must do everything. 
She must cure every ill, banish every discomfort 
and restore paradise for every man, woman and 



120 JOAN OF ARC 

child. To do less, was to be an enemy. If she 
could not do everything for them her powers were 
faulty and if they were faulty they could not be of 
God. If they were not of God, from whence came 
they but from hell, and what of such a woman, if 
not worse than the vilest denunciations of the 
English. Such is the logical mind of selfishness, 
however plausibly it reasons, when demanding 
every meaning to be realized in all forms that can 
be manipulated by will for personal benefits. It 
reveals the anarchist, who thus reasons that right- 
eousness should lay all values at his feet or else 
every such system is his enemy. 

What happened to La Pucelle, happens to every 
beauty and to every good and to every truth, 
where will comes in to use the machinery of logic 
for the mastery of the way. Jeanne d 'Arc treated 
the adulation of the throngs crowding about her 
always with the high spirit of a religious guide. 
** Trust in God and strive to do his Will,'^ was her 
constantly repeated admonition. 

She was the master of consistency in all her 
diplomatic or military affairs, and all the cap- 
tains testify that she had no equal in organizing 
troops into battle array. 

Her negotiations with the Duke of Brittany to 
renew his allegiance to the King, and her success 
in re-uniting the alienated fragments of France, 
shows the highest and best forms of statesman- 
ship. Princes and noblemen began to turn from 
their hostile attitudes toward Charles ' reign, and 




VII (1403-1461) 



PEACE OF A PACIFIST KING 121 

the whole fabric of intrigue against France began 
rapidly to go to pieces. 

4. The Hour Is Always Now for the Will of God 

In the afternoon on Saturday, June 11, 1429, 
the Maid rode out of Orleans with her army on 
a self-imposed task to drive the English from their 
strongholds along the Loire. The Armagnao 
military leaders heard of heavy reenforcements 
coming to the English and they became afraid. 
The council was soon involved in a quarrel, fast 
becoming desperate, when La Pucelle appeared 
among them in great indignation, declaring that 
the Lord was guiding their way and that if it were 
not so she would be back in Domremy guarding 
her sheep. Shamed out of their quarrel, they be- 
came reconciled and went on to the assault of the 
town and the stronghold of Jergeau. A detach- 
ment went on ahead to capture the outside part 
of the town so that the soldiers could sleep in the 
houses. As Jeanne came up, she met the soldiers 
returning. They had been defeated and driven 
back. Taking up her standard she cried out for 
them to come on where she led, and, as she ap- 
proached the English fled, leaving that part of the 
town to the unmolested use of the French. 

On Monday morning at dawn the French artil- 
lery began to batter down the walls. By nine 
'clock an opening had been made, and the trum- 
pets pealed forth the order to assault. In front 



122 JOAN OF ARC 

of the surging mass of soldiers came the Stand- 
ard of the Maid. The Duke of Alengon had not 
yet given the order to rush the breach in the walls. 

''Forward, gentle Duke," she cried, "on to the 
assault." 

"It is not yet the time," he called out to her. 

"Doubt not," she responded. "The time is 
when it pleases Grod and he wills this hour." 

The soldiers heard and swept in after the 
Standard of the Angelic Maid. 

"Ah, gentle Duke!" she cried back at him, 
laughing in a mocking way. "Art afraid! Have 
I not promised thy good wife to send thee back 
to her safe and sound!" 

The Duke hesitated no longer but ordered the 
grand assault. 

The banner never faltered but moved ever in 
the hottest of the fight and wherever it went the 
English fell away from it and victory went with 
it like waves of the sea. 

She had been wounded severely in the foot, but 
it never delayed her for a moment. As she mount- 
ed a ladder to scale the walls with her banner, a 
stone from the walls struck her standard and was 
dashed into fragments on her armor. It struck 
her down, but she rose with her banner, crying, 
"Friends, cheer up! Cheer up, comrades! The 
day is ours ! Come on ! Come on ! " 

Somehow the Angelic Maid grows in the mind 
as a symbol of womanhood leading humanity to 
the fulfillment of courage and power, clearing 



PEACE OF A PACIFIST KING 123 

wrong from the world. If not in war-like form, 
it has been so from the days when motherhood 
teaches the feeble steps, and the hours when 
mother encourages the infant mind to grasp the 
meaning of the world. 

Jergeau was mastered with all the fury and 
passion of war. Not so with Jeanne d'Arc. She 
protected the prisoners and her first care was 
to see that they should not suffer from the en- 
raged people. 

Within two weeks the valley of the Loire was 
cleared of its enemies. 



5. Overcoming the Enemy on the Way to Rheims 

Jeanne rested two nights in Orleans, most of 
the time in the cathedral, at the foot of the altar, 
in silent prayer. And now there was not a single 
general who dared deny that she was a leader su- 
perior in military strategy and foresight to them 
all. 

Tuesday evening she summoned to her the Duke 
of Alengon. i 

*' To-morrow, after dinner," she announced to 
him, ''we go to Meun.'' 

At that town was a strongly fortified garrison 
and its subjugation meant that the way was now 
being opened toward the final goal of all her tasks, 
the way to Eheims. 

True to her plans, her army reached Meun in 
due time. The English fled from the town and 



124 JOAN OF ARC 

took refuge in the fortress. She took possession 
and bade the soldiers to be at ease till morning. 

The next morning Alengon heard that Consta- 
ble de Richemont was marching to join them with 
several famous knights who had joined their for- 
tunes with him. The Constable was in strong dis- 
favor from the King, because of much antagon- 
ism, if not disloyalty, and the King had forbid- 
den AlenQon from receiving Eichemont or his sup- 
port in the royal army. Alengon was personally 
very bitter toward Constable de Richemont and 
he told La Pucelle that if she received the Con- 
stable, he would withdraw from the army. 

The King in conferring authority upon Jeanne 
had among the specified rights at her request com- 
mitted to her the power to pardon offenses done 
against him and his kingdom. 

Lu Pucelle reminded Alengon that if she par- 
doned de Richemont he would be on equality with 
AlenQon both as to person and as to the King's 
service, in which state of affairs Alengon would 
have no excuse to leave that would not be treason. 

In any estimate of the character and career of 
this strange girl, such foresight and firmness have 
much significance in her history. 

When the Constable met her on Friday evening, 
she received him cordially on her own responsi- 
bility. She told him that she would receive him 
free from all disfavor from the King or any one 
in authority, if he would take oath of life loyalty 
to his lawful sovereign. This he was glad to do 



PEACE OF A PACIFIST KING 125 

and thus the last important faction disrupting 
France was closed. 

Meanwhile, a panic had seized the English in 
the fortress. They begged for a council of sur- 
render. This was agreed to and, according to the 
terms arranged, on the next morning, the garri- 
son disarmed, filed across the bridge, leaving 
everything behind but their personal effects. 

6. The Fortunes of War 

Hardly had the last English soldier disappeared 
over the bridge, when a messenger arrived with 
news that a force much larger than that of the 
French was approaching to relieve the fortress. 
The French officers did not believe they could hold 
the town against the superior force and equip- 
ment of the enemy. They advised immediate re- 
treat. 

'*By my Martin-baton, No!" cried Jeanne, who 
wanted battle in the open fields. **God is sending 
them to us for defeat. The King shall to-day 
have the greatest of all his victories." 

The trumpets were ordered to sound the call to 
battle. In swift march, they hastened to meet the 
enemy. Presently they came upon the English 
drawn up in battle line near the village of Patay 
in an advantageous position. 

''There are the English," Alengon said to the 
Maid. "Dare we fight them?" 

Dunois and Richemont came up. 



126 JOAN OF ABC 

She suddenly enquired, *'Have you all good 
spurs r' 

**What!'' cried the Duke, **Are we to be de- 
feated? Shall we turn and run?" 

*'Nay! Nay!" she replied, *'but the enemy is 
about to flee. They will not stop and you must 
have spurs to chase them." 

Plans were therefore laid not only for battle 
but for pursuit. This proved to be a most re- 
markable provision for victory. 

It was hardly a battle. Where the standard of 
La Pucelle waved the battle became a rout and 
then a desperate flight. But they could not es- 
cape the horsemen prepared for the pursuit. The 
cavalry spurred on ahead of the fugitives and 
turned them back to the slaughter, till half were 
scattered over the fields, wounded or dead. 

Sir John Falstaff, the hero and knight of the 
garter, made famous by Shakespeare, broke 
through and fled madly on to Yenville, where the 
people refused him and his associates an entrance, 
and he fled on and on till he was safe within the 
walls of Corbeil. But nothing he could say about 
the sorcery of the witch-maid availed and he lost 
his knighthood on the charge of cowardice. 

In the battle of Patay was completely destroyed 
the really splendid army brought over by the Earl 
of Salisbury to complete the conquest of France. 

It was a wonderful consummation, not open to 
any commonplace explanation, when the Lords, 
Earls and Knights stood captive the next mom- 



PEACE OF A PACIFIST KING 127 

ing before the Maid, who had dictated to a pro- 
fessor at Poitiers, the summons commanding them 
to depart from Orleans and leave the soil of 
France. It was all beyond their comprehension 
as it is onrs. Talbot answered for them all, and 
no more practical explanation has ever since been 
given them, when he replied to their questions, 
"It is the fortune of war." 



7. Favorites of the King 

La Pucelle was all womanly compassion for 
every one suffering who was not receiving that 
suffering in an act of violence against the rights 
of France. That was the crime worthy of what- 
ever punishment that might befall. As she rode 
back from the battlefield of Patay, she saw a 
French soldier driving forward some prisoners, 
one of whom was wounded unto death. In the 
great pity of her soul she sprang from her horse, 
rebuking the cruel soldier. As the wounded man 
sunk down she knelt by his side, ministering ten- 
derly for him as a mother. He asked for a priest 
and she had one brought forthwith to them. She 
took the dying man's head in her arms and weep- 
ing over him, comforted him till he died. He 
looked into her pitying eyes and it is said that he 
saw angels coming to take him away from the 
world of violence and blood. 

That she loved the humble and the poor is well 
attested in the depositions of Dunois. He says 



128 JOAN OF ARC 

that, as she rode by his side, through crowds of 
grateful people, blessed if they could touch her 
garments, happy if they could kneel upon the 
earth where her horse had trod, she said, **In the 
name of God, behold how good and devoted are 
these poor people. There are none others to com- 
pare with them." 

The Angelic Maid was a soul of infinite sympa- 
thy supreme as the motherhood of humanity. 

In a week the Wonderful Woman had freed the 
hopelessly beleagured city of Orleans ; in another 
week she cleared the Loire valley of the numer- 
ously garrisoned enemy, and she wanted to go on 
at once to the coronation as the end of her mis- 
sion. Then she could go back to her flocks in the 
peaceful fields of Domremy. But the coronation 
that Charles most desired was ease. He was born 
to be ministered unto. Though he was grateful 
to this strange and unaccountable girl, it was no 
more than he should expect from his subjects, 
whatever their talents, gifts or powers. Natural- 
ly, anything they possessed from God on down to 
taxes and service should be his. 

The King showered compliments on her and lis- 
tened to the usual advisers suitable to a King, the 
envious favorite Tremouville and the archbishop 
of Eheims. 

The King's favorites were already preparing 
her crown of thorns. They were already shaping 
the road to the martyr's stake. 

All the energy she once used striving to be 



PEACE OF A PACIFIST KING 129 

heard, she now used striving to organize her 
means for the last of her tasks. 

The King advised her to rest. She declared 
that she could not rest. The peace she had made 
between the King and those who were unfriendly 
to him was broken by the renewal of envious an- 
tagonisms. But the humble people of France were 
wild to follow where she led. They came from 
all parts of the kingdom only to find delay and un- 
certainty. It seems that the King himself was 
envious of the interest of the people. He discour- 
aged them in every way that could be devised. 
The King's favorites tried to have her sent off to 
the conquest of Normandy. They said that the 
French army could not yet get through to Eheims. 
The enemy was too strongly garrisoned along the 
way. 

8. None So Blind as Those Who Will Not See 

Jean, her second brother, arrived from Dom- 
remy, in the midst of her endeavors to have the 
King move on to Eheims. She loved him dearly 
and inquired with deep interest about her rela- 
tives and the people of Lorraine. 

One thing he told her that caused her many 
tears and for which she gave many prayers. He 
told her that back at home they believed her power 
began under the Fairy Tree, known as Beautiful 
May. It was the superstition of the peasantry 
and they did not know it would do her harm. 



130 JOAN OF ARC 

There were two accusations which always made 
her Bcream with pain. One was any question of 
her chastity and the other any suggestion that her 
power or mission was from any other source than 
God. 

* ' What ! ' * she cried in consternation. * ' Do they 
"believe back at home as the English believe that 
my love for King and country is not of God!" 

Alas! for humanity! She was soon to learn 
how little that King and country lived in the name 
of her Lord ! 

At last La Pucelle, seeing that she could not en- 
courage the King against his advisers, encamped 
in the field before his castle with her followers, 
who were paying their own expenses with their 
scanty means, there awaiting his feeble decision 
to come on to the coronation. But he came not. 
The King's favorites wanted to have all the glory 
of this final act. The Angelic Girl of the Won- 
derful Faith was like a fawn in the midst of 
wolves. Her God and her Lord of Eight were 
nothing but scornful jests to them. 

Then Jeanne started alone for the advanced 
camps of their army, to clear the way, for the 
King to Eheims. This courage shamed him and 
the next morning he followed her. 

Town after town surrendered along the way and 
supplied the army with food until they came to 
Troyes, where the English and Burgundians gath- 
ered their strength to block her advance. 

For five days the French army, and a host that 



PEACE OF A PACIFIST KING 131 

had flocked to the standard of the Angelic Maid, 
lay in the fields around Troyes, with nothing to 
eat but beans. 

The wonderful thing about this was that a 
strange personage named Brother Richard, pos- 
sessed of the most fiery eloquence and zeal, had 
appeared there during the season of planting 
time, with the strange order from heaven that the 
people plant beans. There was no reason that 
any one knew for planting beans, but the peas- 
ants did it, and without that harvest of beans, 
now ready, La Pucelle's army of Coronation 
would have been compelled to disperse from be- 
fore Troyes and abandon the attempt. The 
Maid^s mission would have failed and the justifi- 
cation of all her sacrifice and labor would have 
been lost. 

La Pucelle was exclusively practical. She de- 
nied all miracle. But her followers believed she 
could do anything. She had only to speak to her 
Lord and there would be abundance. She had 
only to wave her banner in the name of God and 
the enemy would become panic-stricken and pow- 
erless. The incompetence of ignorance always 
fails in the process of faith and supplies the 
means of conquest to the wills of despotism. 

9. When Will Gives Way to Faith. 

But if ever an uncouth, unequipped army 
looked hopeless, this one was now so. They were 



132 JOAN OF ARC 

destitute in the heart of the enemies ' possessions. 
All around them were fortified cities. They were 
not more than half fed and soon found themselves 
with less than a day's supply of their meager 
food. The officers were not only in doubt but in 
revolt against the folly of trusting to a girl to lead 
an army. 

The Archbishop of Rheims declared to the coun- 
cil, called by the King, that only a miracle could 
save the army from famine, the city could not be 
taken without artillery, and it did not seem pos- 
sible that the minds of the English commanders 
could be changed, as they paid no attention to the 
summons of the Maid. All the counselors in their 
turn spoke to the King, advising him that nothing 
but retreat could save them, as there was no help 
short of several days' journey. 

Then Robert le MeQon spoke. He was one of 
the three who had heard Jeanne at Loches tell the 
King about her Voices. He reminded the King 
that the expedition had not been undertaken 
through reliance upon the military power of their 
soldiers. It could never have been thought of on 
such grounds. It was undertaken upon the help 
God was giving to the Angelic Maid, and she 
should be sent for that they might hear what she 
had to say. 

This appealed to the King's conscience and he 
decided to send for her. Faith in the power of 
righteousness and the estimate of possibilities in 
the struggle of wills were again on trial. 



CHAPTER VIII 

A DIVINE CROWN AND THE ROYAL HEAD 

1. The King Reluctantly Patronising Another 

Power 

Men of might relying upon will usually seek di- 
vine power only as a substitute for avoiding fail- 
ure/ So long as there is any chance of winning 
by their own will, they dislike the restraints im- 
posed by the interference even of a temporary 
substitute. N 

Joan of Arc must have felt that kind of con- 
tempt for the weakness of Kings, when she came 
into the royal presence of this man who was of 
the most corrupt origin and from the most trea- 
sonable political system in Europe. Could a di- 
vine mission be given to such a man! But she 
doubtlessly believed that her responsibility so 
marvelously proven to be divine would be no less 
imposing and compelling when thus conferred 
upon him. A consciousness of their belittling con- 
descension must have weighed heavy upon her as 
she came into the council hall before these un- 
worthy men. 

She came in with stately bearing as one having 
authority above the wills of men. She made her 

133 



134. JOAN OF ARC 

respectful salute to the King. Then she turned to 
the Archbishop with a motion for him to proceed 
with what he had to say. 

The Archbishop spoke at length, covering all 
the reasons that had been given why the army 
should save itself while it could do so in retreat. 

She then turned to Charles and asked him if he 
would believe her if she spoke her mind. He re- 
plied that he would surely believe anything rea- 
sonable. 

*' Gentle Dauphin," she replied, **if you will 
stay two days longer before Troyes, the city shall 
be yours." 

*' Jeanne," interposed the Archbishop, **we 
would gladly promise to stay thrice so long, if it 
could be reasonable that we could have it." 

**Then never fear," replied the Maid; "you 
shall have it to-morrow." 

The fervor of the inspired warrior may be felt 
in the words Theodosia Garrison has her say for 
the freedom of France: 

"And angels militant shall fling the gates of Heaven wide, 
And souls new-dead whose lives were shed like leaves on war's 

red tide 
Shall cross their swords above our heads and cheer us as we 
ride. 

"For with me goes that soldier saint, Saint Michael of the 

sword, 
And I shall ride on his right side, a page beside his lord. 
And men shall follow like swift blades to reap a sure re- 
ward. 



A DIVINE CROWN 135 

"Grant that I answer this my call, yea, though the end may be 
The naked shame, the biting flame, the last, long agony ; 
I would go singing down that road where faggots wait for 
me." 

The King and his advisers quickly agreed that 
she should take charge and have another day. It 
was to be a great day for France. 

Jeanne ran out of the house, mounted her horse 
and was away to the camp. With her Martin-ba- 
ton she pointed out the work for the captains, 
knights, squires and soldiers to do. They made 
bundles of small limbs from the trees with which 
to fill the moat ; they brought parts of frames from 
houses torn down from which to bridge the mire 
of the ditch. Some mounted the culverins and 
bombards ; others prepared ladders and gathered 
material at convenient places for assault. They 
could work when they believed and they could 
fight in the greater faith. Jeanne worked the 
whole night through and aroused the same zeal in 
her men. Dunois said that she did as much as any 
three captains. 

It was from these scenes that several of her 
hard-minded warriors, in testimony concerning 
her as a soldier, said, that in the art of war, in 
the plannings of battle and leading soldiers in as- 
sault, **she bore herself like the most skillful cap- 
tain in the world," this child fresh from the pas- 
ture-fields of Lorraine, who had power and in- 
spired power in the name of humanity and God. 



136 JOAN OF ARC 

2. Brother Richard and His Assurance 

The Englisli soldiers within the besieged city 
saw these preparations. They saw the Maid all 
through that momentous day, and, when darkness 
came, her torches showed her tireless work 
through the whole night long. The enemy saw 
feebleness change to power. The defeated were 
working like men sure of victory. The people 
could not sleep, they flocked to the cathedrals to 
pray. Many of them ran wild through the streets 
crying that the day of judgment had come. That 
strange fanatic known as Brother Richard was 
there. He went about whispering counsel that 
their souls must be prepared for the day of God 
that was coming with the next sunrise. 

The exploits of the Maid, when she came wav- 
ing her holy banner, were told with trembling 
lips with a meaning never felt before. Even the 
solid stone walls could not stand before the mighty 
waves set in motion from her hands. 

Possibly she was from God. If so, who could 
stand before her ! 

Brother Richard warned them that if she were 
from God it would not only be death but damna- 
tion to oppose her. If she was of the devil, their 
miserable death at her hands could hardly be 
worse. There can be no doubt that this man of 
strangely true intuitions, was preparing the psy- 
chological way for the victory of the Wonderful 
Woman. 



A DIVINE CEOWN 137 

The people did not wait for the military com- 
manders. At dawn they sent Brother Richard 
out through the gates with a vessel of holy water 
to ask her if it were indeed truth that she came 
from God. 

The priest came into the presence of the An- 
gelic Maid with great caution. He solemnly 
sprinkled the holy water upon the ground before 
him to purify his steps, he signed himself with 
tl^e cross so that no devilish influence could touch 
him, and then he threw the holy drops into the 
space between them so that there could be no dev- 
ils of the air to mar their conference. But Jeanne 
had no superstitions. She had no fear of holy 
water. "Come on boldly," she cried, laughing at 
his grotesque gestures of fear. **I shall not fly 
away.'* 

A few minutes' conversation was all that 
Brother Richard needed. He hastened back into 
the city and such was his report that the city lost 
not a moment in hastening the surrender. 

Many of Charles' council desired to punish the 
city for its sins against him, but Jeanne would al- 
low nothing that was not full pardon and peace, 
as soon as they took the oath of allegiance to their 
rightful King. 

5. Keeping Faith with the Enemy 

Europe had never achieved anything but a very 
inconsistent and variable code of honor. Per- 



138 JOAN OF ARC 

sonal advantage was the supreme divine right. 
No one thought of keeping an oath as being bind- 
ing when it was unprofitable. The measure of all 
things was self, while God was merely a great self 
magnified into almighty sovereignty. 

But, in that most lawless and corrupt period of 
all time, this marvelous child of faith was so su- 
perior to her age as to believe that covenants 
should be kept, and that righteousness existed be- 
tween man and man only as it must be between 
man and God. 

Troyes was overwhelmingly convinced by 
Brother Eiehard that the Maid was indeed from 
God and they must not be a stumbling block in 
her way. The English officers saw at once that 
they could not overcome the superstitious fear of 
their own men, nor withstand the determination 
of the citizens to surrender, and have any hope 
of defeating the ever victorious woman. They 
agreed to be disarmed and to leave the city, pro- 
vided that they would be allowed to take away 
with them their personal possessions. This was 
agreed to by the Warrior Woman in the name of 
the King. 

It was soon learned that the English soldiers 
had bound their French prisoners and were tak- 
ing them along as property. This was technically 
correct, as prisoners were the profitable spoils of 
war. Each man capturing another held the cap- 
tive for ransom. Word of what was happening 
was carried to Joan. **In the name of God," she 



A DIVINE CROWN 139 

cried, 'Hhey shall not be taken hence!" But the 
English soldiers claimed that their treaty of sur- 
render included the right to take away their 
property. 

La Pucelle mounted her horse in great indigna- 
tion and galloped forward to the English com- 
mander. He likewise insisted that such was the 
understanding that his officers had of the treaty 
made and so understood by the French officers. 
\ She insisted that no one could make a treaty that 
was not right before God.' But she believed in 
keeping faith even with the enemy. 

Her conclusion was instantly reached: if the 
King had allowed such a treaty of surrender, he 
must pay the ransom. She hastened back to the 
King. He told her that the English being un- 
armed could not take away the prisoners if she 
would not allow it. She insisted that no such vio- 
lence against a covenant between men was possi- 
ble and it was equally impossible to allow the pris- 
oners to be carried away into captivity. He must 
pay the ransom and set the men free. And it was 
done. She soon returned to the city with the pris- 
oners glorifying her as their savior. Probably for 
the first time in the history of Kings there was as- 
serted a divine right greater than kings, even as 
later on she was to pay with her life the penalty 
for holding the faith that the divine right of relig- 
ious conscience is superior to all the tribunals or 
decrees of kings, ecclesiastical potentates, or or- 
ganized masters of church and state. In this free- 



140 JOAN OF ARC 

dom of faith kept true is the immortal meaning of 
Joan of Arc for the American rights of man and 
the humanity of the world. 

4. On the Marvelous Way to the Coronation 

About ten o'clock on the morning of July 11, 
the King in a triumphal procession rode into 
Troyes. Brother Eichard preached one of his 
most famous sermons to them, and henceforth was 
a personal follower of the "Wonderful Woman. 

*'God does not work for the idle,'' was the 
constant saying of La Pucelle. ^'Work and God 
will work. ' ' She wanted to be always at work un- 
til the completion of her mission. At last she got 
them moving on to Rheims. Town after town sur- 
rendered or fell before them. It was a triumphal 
procession on to the great coronation of the King. 
She never thought of it in any other way than the 
fulfillment of God's will. Her religious devotions 
were unfailing and she inspired the same spirit in 
all around her. 

Dunois says that she had the vesper bells rung 
half an hour every evening wherever she was be- 
cause in them she could hear the music of the 
Voices, as when she was in the fields of Domremy. 
He also says that wherever she came to stay all 
night she always inquired for the most respectable 
woman in the town, with whom she would lodge, 
while guards kept watch on the outside. He, who 
had been with her through so many victories, was 



A DIVINE CROWN 141 

one of the noblest of men, and none can doubt his 
testimony. He says that **all the soldiers held 
her as sacred, and so well did she bear herself in 
warfare, in words and in deeds, as a follower of 
God, that no evil could be said of her." Princes, 
noblemen and priests all with the same respect 
only extend the description of one of the noblest 
women ever born to the earth. 

Rheims was reached with only the delay inci- 
dental to receiving the surrender of the towns, and 
from performing the ceremony of allegiance by 
being sworn to the Dauphin on the way to become 
King. 

Saturday morning, July 16, the Archbishop of 
Rheims entered the city and prepared it for the 
reception of the King at sunset. At the appointed 
time, the triumphal entry was made, Jeanne rid- 
ing by the side of the King. Her dreams in the 
fields of Domremy were coming true, and it was 
surely the most wonderful dream ever dreamed 
by a little girl. Far more, as a testimony to the 
power of faith, it was the dream of the most won- 
derful little girl. 

The next morning at nine o 'clock, Sunday, July 
17, the historic cathedral at Rheims was ready for 
the coronation of a king. In that great historic 
hall, now so torn by the bombardments of the in- 
vader, gorgeous colors, velvet and silver, satin 
and gold, steel-pointed spears and glinting armor 
were mingled with waving streams of crimson and 



142 JOAN OF ARC 

azure, flowing from the high windows and re- 
fleeted from the many-figured aisles. 

The holy oil with which the King must be an- 
nointed at Rheims was of great historic venera- 
tion. It was said to have been brought down in a 
vial from heaven for the coronation of Clovis. All 
was at last ready and the great day in the resur- 
rection and restoration of France was now at 
hand. 

5. The Coronation 

It was as if the impossible had come to pass. 
And yet, king and archbishop never believe that 
anything is impossible with God for them. Be- 
ing the highest, why should the divine go any 
lower for the conferring of favors or for the in- 
terests of humanity ! On them was the glory and 
honor. But, whatever they thought, they recog- 
nized in Joan an instrument now proven to be use- 
ful and they gave her a prominent place in the 
coronation. 

One writer describing the scene says, **Joan 
stood beside the altar, her standard in her hand. 
Her celestial figure, glorified by the rays which 
shone upon her through the stained glass win- 
dows, seemed the personification of the angel of 
France, presiding over the resurrection of her 
country." Perhaps that gorgeous assembly could 
not understand which was the great figure in that 
coronation. It might be the King or the Arch- 



A DIVINE CROWN 143 

bishop but it could hardly be a woman, however 
strangely God had looked upon her. 

But the like of her had never been seen at any 
glory of kings and never again, as there would 
never again be such times, could there be such a 
warrior for the rights of man in the name of God. 

At the foot of the great altar, stood Charles the 
Dauphin of France, ready for the mystic ointment 
of Saint Remi's oil, that was to confirm the low- 
ering of the crown of France upon his head. 

The Maid, clad in silver mail, holding aloft her 
standard with which she had waved victory into 
every fortress and hostile camp from Blois to 
Rheims, stood like a guardian angel at the side of 
the altar. ' * That banner has borne the pain, ' ' she 
said, "and it should share the glory.'* 

Felicia Hemans, describing Joan at the Corona- 
tion, says, 

"Her helm was raised, 
And the fair face revealed, that upward gazed, 
Intensely worshipping — a still, clear face, 
Youthful but brightly solemn! Woman's cheek 
And brow were there, in deep devotion meek, 
Yet glorified with inspiration's trace 
On its pure paleness; while enthroned above, 
The pictured virgin with her smile of love 
Seemed bending o'er her votaress." 

6. The Task Completed and the Longing for Home 

The Dauphin of France was now King accord- 
ing to the ancient ceremony of coronation used 



144 JOAN OF ARC 

since the time of Clovis. Then a strange act 
took place when the King aros6 with the crown 
of France on his head. 

Those who were near her testify that, ''When 
the Maid saw the King had been consecrated and 
crowned, she knelt, weeping as she clasped his 
knees, saying, 'Gentle King, now is accomplished 
the will of God, who decreed that I should raise 
the siege of Orleans, and bring yon to the city of 
Rheims, for your holy sacring/ " 

She wanted the King to understand and with 
him all the people that she now considered her 
service at an end. 

"And right great pity came upon all who saw 
her, ' ' continues one who was present, ' ' and many 
wept." 

Well might they weep, for it was not like the 
age of Egypt when there arose men who knew not 
Joseph, because here there were men around her, 
in high places, who knew not God. 

And now before the entrance of the place where 
her King was crowned, unmolested by the van- 
dalism that ruined the great Cathedral in the 
European war, stands her statue with the sym- 
bolic standard in her hands. The King is lost in 
the contempt of history, but the faith of the peas- 
ant girl forever flourishes in the soul of humanity. 

As she rode away in the coronation procession 
with the King, the people were shouting and sing- 
ing in religious enthusiasm all along the way. 
Jeanne was greatly moved by their devotion and 




CHARLES VII AND THE MAID OF ORLEANS ENTERING 

RHEIMS 

From a painting about the year 1700 



A DIVINE CROWN 145 

she said to the Archbishop, ' ' When I die I should 
wish to be buried among such good people." 

The prelate asked her how her mind in such an 
hour could turn to thoughts of death. 

**I know not," she replied. **My death will 
come as God pleases. But I would that God let 
me return home to my sister and my brothers. 
They would be so glad to see me, and I have ful- 
filled the will of my Savior. ' ' 

7. The Task, the Woman and the King 

Dunois, of Orleans, who knew her work best, in 
his sworn testimony says, ''When she spoke seri- 
ously of the war, and of her own career and voca- 
tion, she never affirmed anything but that she was 
sent to raise the siege of Orleans and to lead the 
King to Rheims to be crowned." 

So, when she stepped forth from the great 
throng at the completion of the Coronation, and 
embraced the knees of the crowned monarch, say- 
ing, * ' Gentle King, now is the pleasure of God ful- 
filled," we may well believe it was like unto the 
cry of old, ''Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant 
depart in peace." 

John Stirling, writing in England when she was 
still thought of only as a sorceress, says of her 
desire to return home, at the completion of the 
coronation : 

"And with many tears implored! 
'Tis the sound of home restored! 



146 JOAN OF ARC 

And as mounts the angel show 
Gliding with them she would go, 
But, again to stoop below, 
And, returned to green Lorraine, 
Be a shepherd-child again." 

Elsewhere in his poetry he speaks of her as 
''the most wonderful, exquisite and complete per- 
sonage in all the history of the world. ' ' 

Joseph Stephenson, in his ''Wars of the Eng- 
lish in France," says, "Had she returned home 
with her parents from the coronation at Rheims, 
had she escaped from prison, or even been par- 
doned by her judges . . . she would have become 
the heroine of romance instead of the heroine of 
history. . . . Her death was her triumph, and 
from the ashes of her execution-pile at Rouen 
arose the regenerative liberty of France." 

After naming the great promises of her 
"Voices," he says, "But for Joan they had no 
promise to her save this — ^that at the end, after 
a great victory, they would take her home to Para- 
dise." 

The illustrious lady, Christine de Pisan, was in 
her old age an inmate of the Abbey of Poissy 
where her daughter had long been a nun. She 
wrote at that time of the triumph at Orleans, a 
poem of five hundred lines in praise of the Maid, 
in which she said, 

"And thou. Maid most happy, most honored 
of God, thou hast loosed the cord with which 



A DIVINE CROWN 147 

France was bound. Canst thou be praised 
enough, thou who hast brought peace to this 
land laid low by war?'* 

In praise of women through Jeanne, she said, 

** Honor to the feminine sex! God loves her. 
A damsel of sixteen . . . the enemy flees before 
her. Many eyes behold it. She goeth forth cap- 
turing towns and castles. She is the first cap- 
tain of our host. Such power had not Hector 
or Achilles ... in heaven shall ye have reward 
and glory, for whosoever fighteth in a just 
cause, winneth Paradise." ' 

But this really learned woman proved not to be 
so good a prophet. She said, *'In her conquest of 
the Holy Land, she will tear up the Saracens like 
weeds. . . . There shall her life end." 

At the close of the coronation rewards were 
freely bestowed upon the princes, knights and 
officers who had contributed to the victories re- 
sulting in the crowning of the King. Then La 
Pucelle was asked what she wanted. The Heav- 
enly Maid remembered only her childhood home. 
It should have all the reward. She asked that the 
two villages, Domremy and Greux should be for- 
ever free from taxation. The King granted her 
request and caused it to be written as * * a favor of 
and at the request of our well-beloved Jeanne the 
Maid, and for the great, high, notable and profit- 



148 JOAN OF ARC 

able service which she has done us, and does each 
day toward the recovery of our kingdom." 

And all honor be this much unto King Charles* 
word. Every year until the profligate days of 
Louis XV, it was written over against the taxes 
on those two villages in the tax book: *' Nothing, 
for the sake of the Maid." 



8. After the Coronation 

Joan of Arc was now at the height of her 
achievements in world history, but not yet to the 
greatness of her wonderful character. The King 
would not let her go from his service. It seemed 
to him no less preposterous now that she should 
go back to her flocks in Domremy, than when he 
first saw her that she should achieve the crown 
for him at Rheimg. As for her, if she must re- 
main in the service of France, she could not be 
idle or lose any time. 

The Duke of Burgundy was yet in open hostil- 
ity to the King, though not fully in accord with 
the English. She at once wrote him a letter in 
which she said, ** High and mighty Prince, Duke of 
Burgundy, Jeanne the Maid, in the name of the 
King of Heaven, her rightful and sovereign Lord, 
requires that the King of France and you make a 
good, firm and lasting peace. Forgive each other 
with a good heart, fully, as loyal Christians ought ; 
and, if you must fight, go against the Saracens. 
... I beg and pray you, with clasped hands, that 



A DIVINE CROWN 149 

you will make no longer war upon us, you, your 
soldiers or your subjects ; for believe very surely 
that how many men soever you lead against us, 
tbey shall gain nothing, and great pity it will be 
for the battle and the bloodshed." 

Shakespeare in his **Joan of Arc" puts her 
words into this form: 

"See ! See the pining malady of France. 
Behold the wounds, the most unnatural wounds, 
Which thou hast given her woeful breast ! 
Oh, turn thy edged sword another way ; 
Strike those that hurt, and hurt not those that help !" 

• Jeanne d'Arc with her marvelous military in- 
sight desired to march at once on to Paris, but 
the King as if composed of the ancient traditions 
of slow plodding warfare, did not dare to order 
the capture of Paris. It looked like too big a task 
even for **the daughter of the King of Heaven." 
Such swiftness of execution was too quick for his 
imagination. 

The war-council decided that not Paris but the 
strongholds supporting Paris should be first re- 
duced, and thus was the wonderful enthusiasm of 
her army to be wasted on the outposts instead of 
being led to a crushing victory upon the center 
at Paris. Her brilliant military strategy could 
not be used for four hundred years, when Napo- 
leon used her swift and direct methods with 
which to win some of the greatest victories in 
history. 



150 JOAN OF ARC 

The delay gave time for the Duke of Bedford 
to rush English troops to the strengthening of 
Paris, and to bring inducements to bear on the 
Duke of Burgundy not to make peace with Charles 
de Valois. 

Bedford prevailed upon his uncle Cardinal 
Beaufort to come to his aid. The Cardinal had 
already sent an army to help fight down the Huss- 
ites in Bohemia, and now he turned with pious 
zeal to the task of the Armagnac witch known 
as Joan of Arc. Bedford needed time to make 
his preparations to hold Paris, and the Duke of 
Burgundy, now more and more being committed 
to the English Cause, delayed Charles four days 
more at Eheims, on negotiations for peace. Then 
he succeeded in getting a fifteen days' truce un- 
der pretense of negotiating the surrender of 
Paris. 

9. The Road of Treason and Defeat 

Diplomacy and intrigue had now taken the place 
of the Voices of the Maid in the Councils of the 
King. The little she could get done was by sheer 
force of her tireless energy and will, — this girl of 
seventeen! She had seen her high noon at 
Eheims, but now her faith began to fear, not for 
her cause but for her lack of a cause. Her work 
was now more for the glory of a feeble King than 
for the good of the people or the interests of any 
heavenly calling. Slowly she felt about her the 



A DIVINE CROWN 151 

creeping coils of faithlessness and the confusions 
of insatiable greed. 

**I fear nothing but treachery," were her sig- 
nificant words to Gerardin. There was no more 
her heavenly voices in the vesper bells. The cold 
hand of man's inhumanity to man was freezing 
the celestial fires in her soul. 

On August 7, 1429, Bedford wrote a letter to 
Charles VII in which the Duke berated the King 
as one ^'Who accepted the help of superstitious 
and reprobate folk, a woman, disorderly and de- 
famed, wearing a man's attitude, and of dissolute 
conduct," and whom he challenged to combat 
''with all the perjured rascals of his train." 

This challenge was made because the English 
and the Burgundian armies were now ready. The 
slothful King and his intriguing court could not 
complete the restoration following the task to 
which the Maid had been inspired. She was not 
now in the army according to her divine call from 
Domremy. Heaven had given her the sign of her 
calling and had closed the mission. 

The challenge to battle for the way to Paris had 
its effect and the corrupted cause of the King was 
to be put to the test with an unprepared army. 

The fatal disbelief and slothfulness of the 
King's favorites wound him about as in a net of 
indifference, and the Maid often became weary 
and fell into the weakness of tears. She could 
not win victories with such unworthy slackness in 



152 JOAN OF ABC 

men. She might thus work for unworthy idlers, 
but God would not. 

The English leaders frequently sent her word 
that if they could capture her they would burn 
her as a witch, and then in response she would 
cry to the King that he must come on to battle 
for his rights. She said, **I cry, 'Go in to the 
English and I shall go in myself.' " 

But the easy mind of the King was the easy 
dupe of both the Duke of Burgundy and the King 
of England. He believed he was a great diplomat. 
He thought he could persuade the Burgundians 
from their alliance with England and thus force 
a peace without further battles. *'As to peace 
with the English," Jeanne reiterated, ''the only 
peace possible is their return to their own coun- 
try." 

The stupidity and folly of the King is shown 
in his compliance with everything suggested by 
the Duke of Burgundy. Charles would not fight 
him as long as the Duke promised anything in the 
name of peace. Her light was darkening under 
a sky so beclouded by selfish wills that she could 
not see her way, and she became patient, so pa- 
thetically patient. The holiness of the King was 
fading from her vision. The hour of betrayal 
was at hand, and she was no longer to be seen at 
court when there were to be found any group of 
the humble with whom she could worship. 

It was always Jeanne and the people. Those 
in authority were always opposing and obstruct- 



A DIVINE CROWN 153 

mg. They were glad when the day came so that 
they could be rid of her interference with their 
plans. 

The King's court was composed of false court- 
iers, artful flatterers and greedy sycophants. The 
weakness that could endure no controversy, was 
unable to organize his own household, and could 
in no sense obtain any rights through war. The 
court did not want one near who required decency 
and they were glad to be rid of La Pucelle. This 
reveals how absolutely essential that morality is 
to humanity, and that without its divine loyalty 
there is no possible meaning for a social world. 

In the midst of such demoralization there could 
be no peace, and the noblest of peacemakers could 
have no influence upon such ignoble wills. Autoc- 
racy and immorality are both disastrous and im- 
possible to social justice. The American presi- 
dent, defining Americanism in the European War, 
made it clear that real Americans ** desire peace 
by the overcoming of evil, by the defeat once for 
all of the sinister forces that interrupt peace and 
render it impossible." As the vesper bells voiced 
divine harmony in the soul of the wonderful 
woman, so her life rings out as the liberty bell of 
our coming civilization, not only in America, and 
for France, but throughout the world. 



CHAPTER IX 
ON THE WAY TO PARIS 

1. Mountains Unapproachable hy Faith 

Many of the Maid's most devoted captains and 
knights had been taken from her and scattered 
over detached commands, and yet, with an almost 
incredible organizing power and military insight, 
she overcame the delays made to please the Duke 
of Burgundy, and got the army under way to- 
ward Paris. 

Insurmountable as seemed the obstacles from 
Domremy to Rheims, the way from Rheims to 
Paris was worse from the unpatriotic stupidity 
and apathy with which she had to deal. It made 
little difference to most of the people whether 
their masters were English, Burgundians or Ar- 
magnacs. 

On Sunday, August 14, her forces arrived be- 
fore the English fortified about the village Notre- 
Dame-des-Victoires. 

There was some skirmishing back and forth be- 
fore night-fall, but the real battle was expected to 
take place in the morning. All night she worked 
with her former zeal to have the army ready, but 
the next morning the English would not come out 
to battle. Every device was made to provoke 

154 



ON THE WAY TO PARIS 155 

them, but they kept close behind their defenses. 
Then La Pucelle took her standard and rode down 
with a small detachment to the entrenchments, 
striking her standard against the walls and dar- 
ing them to come out. But in vain. At this, a 
retreat was ordered to deceive the enemy, but in- 
stead of following in an attack, Bedford withdrew 
his men and marched on to Paris. 

The end of the fifteen days' truce came, and 
the Duke of Burgundy sent his nephew, Jean of 
Luxembourg, with negotiations for more delay. 
Charles, supported by the Archbishop of Eheims, 
pleaded the great virtue of peaceful means and 
sent a commission to a council of peace. 

Meanwhile, many towns and villages, on being 
summoned to surrender by Charles, readily con- 
sented, because all the forces holding them, by 
either Burgundians or English, were being with- 
drawn to the defense of Paris. 

By August 22, the envoys had returned from 
their conference with the Duke of Burgundy, un- 
able to report anything accomplished. Five weeks 
had now been trifled away since the coronation, 
which had been used by the Burgundians and Eng- 
lish to strengthen themselves against the royal 
army, and to lessen the prestige of the Maid. 

2. The Need for Friends and Also a Fatal Letter 

Jeanne could endure the delay no longer. 
**My beautiful Duke," she commanded Alengon, 



156 JOAN OF ARC 

"get your men ready and your captains, for, "by 
my Martin-baton, I will go and see Paris, nearer 
than I have seen it yet!'* 

Her friends among the officers in the army were 
yet in the majority, and it was decided to obey 
her orders and move on to the capture of Paris, 
even though they would be leaving the King be- 
hind, and would be ending all his negotiations 
with Burgundy, by moving against Paris. 

The army was drawn up just ready for the 
order to start, when a letter was brought to her 
from the Count of Armagnac. She was in the act 
of mounting her horse as the messenger gave it 
to her. It was the one heartless, fatal thing 
which her enemies in the church were to use for 
her destruction. 

There had been three claimants for the papacy 
and three popes had been elected. The Count re- 
cited these things in his letter and begged her "to 
supplicate our Lord Jesus Christ, that from His 
infinite mercy He will declare to us by you, which 
of the three above named is true pope, and which 
it will please Him that we henceforth obey." 

It was so that, between the writing of that letter 
and the delivery to Jeanne, the church had settled 
its divisions and Martin V had won the decision 
as pope, so as to be confirmed in the pontifical 
chair. But this news had not yet reached France. 

The request was not blameworthy because such 
had become the fame of the Heavenly Maid, be- 
yond her own army, that among all the friends 



ON THE WAY TO PARIS 157 

of France an old prophecy from tlie time of the 
Crusaders was believed to mean her and her mis- 
sion. To have the Dauphin crowned King of 
Rheims was only a beginning of her great work. 
She was destined to recover Jerusalem from the 
Saracens and restore the Holy Land to the Chris- 
tians. Then, after establishing the reign of the 
universal faith, the Daughter of Heaven was to 
die at the tomb of the Son of God. 

Her answer to the Count of Armagnac was used 
in her trial to show that she assumed to be greater 
than the Church. 

Her associate officers were impatient for orders 
to advance and threatened to throw the messenger 
in the moat for delaying them, but Jeanne insisted 
on replying. She felt the need of friends now 
and the Count of Armagnac should not be disap- 
pointed. She wrote in her reply, * ' Of this matter 
I can not well inform you until I am in Paris or 
elsewhere at rest. At present I am too busy with 
the war; but when you shall hear that I am in 
Paris, send me a messenger and I will let you 
know truly which you ought to believe, when I 
shall have learned it by the counsel of my right- 
ful Sovereign Lord, the King of All the Earth." 

3. The Sordid Minds of a Royal Court 

Charles VII appeared to be a King who was 
always afraid of too much success. He was so 
slow to avail himself of the Maid's achievements 



158 JOAN OF ARC 

that one might well believe he feared to owe so 
much to heaven or to her. Perhaps there were 
unconscious reasons for this as her work meant 
purity of purpose, and he, despite his good inten- 
tions, was helplessly involved in the network of 
intrigues that seemed to be not only the pastime 
but the life of his favorites in the court. 

Paris was filled with consternation and despair 
at the approach of Joan and her army. The most 
terrifying defamation of her was officially dis- 
seminated. It was said that King Charles had 
decided to destroy Paris, to give the city over to 
pillage and massacre, to bum and destroy every- 
thing, even to plow the ground and sow it with 
salt, as told of Romans in the destruction of Car- 
thage. The Armagnac witch was to put every 
one to torture through her sorceries and there was 
to be no mercy to man, woman or child in any 
sanctuary or for any cause. But falsehoods for 
political effects were not peculiar to those days. 
The liar for political or other treasonable pur- 
poses is still with us to defraud our rights of 
thinking, to pervert our means of reasoning and 
to deform the mind in its provisions for our lives. 
*'Who steals my purse steals trash,** said Shakes- 
peare in comparing money with the worth of a 
good name, but the divine right to a true mind is 
so much greater than all, that the thief and the 
slanderer are incomparably less disastrous and 
Satanic than the liar. 

In the terror of their impending doom the peo- 



ON THE WAY TO PARIS 159 

pie gave up everything they had. The churches 
yielded all their treasure. The people worked 
night and day. 

Battles to test the defenses were now being 
hourly fought all around the walls of Paris. La 
Pucelle with her banner was at the front of them 
all. The Duke de Alengon was usually at her side. 

But the vigorous ardor with which she won 
victories for the unappreciative King lacked the 
heavenly fire of her appearance before Orleans. 
The success of the King as the divine cause of 
her people was the life of her mission, and the 
feebleness of his life in her cause began to make 
uncertain the voices of the divine way. God and 
France and the King were one idea in her service. 
Nevertheless, she was surrounded with the most 
enthusiastic youth, eager to do some heroic deed 
in the sight of the Angelic Maid. But her Voices 
had ceased to visit her with their sublime com- 
mand, * ' Go on ! Daughter of Heaven, go on ! " And 
yet she tried to be brave in the same old wonder- 
ful way. 

She felt that she and her soldiers needed the 
presence of their King. She urgently begged him 
to come on to Saint Denis, and he promised to be 
there September 2, but he did not come. 

She had always held the soldiers under the 
strictest moral discipline, but the little respect 
shown her, becoming worse and worse, from the 
sordid King, court and prelates, began to have 
its influence on the soldiers and moral discipline 



160 JOAN OF ARC 

became lax beyond her power to prevent. The 
wanton women that had been such a feature of all 
armies, now appeared among the men around her 
and it was like a deadly pestilence to her soul. 

One day at Saint Denis the mistress of one of 
her officers came riding by, made up to imitate La 
Pucelle. "Worse than all, the Duke of Alengon 
could see nothing to rebuke in it, as in tears pro- 
testing she rode by his side. They saw nothing 
in La Pucelle but a woman warrior, their religious 
conception of her was only superstition, and their 
minds were so sordid in sensual interests that 
there could be no sensibility for any real meaning 
of patriotism, religion, or of God. 

The vicious insult was more than a blow at her 
womanhood, — it was like a stamp of evil, placed 
by her own friends upon all she had done. She 
drew her sword, the sacred sword of Saint Cath- 
erine de Fierbois, and the woman rode away in 
terror. Jeanne spurred her horse after the ab- 
horred woman and struck her across the shoul- 
ders with the flat of her sword. The blade broke 
in twain, and, in grief for the loss of her noble 
weapon, the Maid thought no more of the wanton 
woman. She sent the sword to the armorer to 
be restored but they said it could not be done. 
Charles heard of it and suddenly achieved the en- 
ergy to be profoundly if not righteously indig- 
nant. He said that Joan should have used a stick 
on the woman and not a holy relic such as was the 
sword of Saint Catherine. 



ON THE WAY TO PARIS 161 

Her soldiers took it as a bad omen. Her holy 
sword had been broken ! Truly, it must be a bad 
sign. The King, bis court and all the priests be- 
lieved it to be so. But Jeanne had no such super- 
stitions of luck. In its place she put on a finely 
jeweled sword which she herself had wrenched 
from a Burgundian officer in the midst of battle, 
and she fought with it on the fatal road to Paris 
as valiantly as in the better days when she was 
on the way to Rheims. 

4. Religious Faith and the Confidence of 
~ Superstition 

It soon became evident to the Duke of AleuQon 
that the King must come to restore confidence. 
The Duke accordingly went after him and brought 
him. Confidence was at least superficially re- 
stored, and the soldiers, once more rejoicing in 
the old reverence for the Angelic Maid, declared 
to one another that, ''She will put the King in 
Paris, even if it should all depend on her alone." 

The day for the assault arrived and the people 
of Paris crowded the churches in utter despair. 
It was believed by them to be their hour of de- 
struction, their day of doom. 

Of all who suffered in pitiful terror none were 
in deeper fear than Queen Isabeau, whom history 
and prophecy alike charged with the ruin of 
France. She was living in the worst of neglect 
and degradation under the charity of Count Saint- 



162 JOAN OF ARC 

Pol. It is said that in dread of the sorcery of the 
inai*tyred woman who was to restore France from 
her betrayal, she killed herself soon after the 
peace of Arras, and was thrown into the moat. 

The assault was begun fearlessly and fiercely. 
At two *clock the Maid decided to lead the attack 
in person to the foot of the broken walls. Bearing 
her standard aloft, followed by her bodyguard 
and foot-soldiers, she crossed the dry moat and 
mounted over the ridge separating it from the 
mud-moat. There she handed her standard to a 
soldier and began to test the depth of the moat 
with her lance. At that moment an arrow pierced 
the soldier's foot and he raised his visor so he 
could see better to draw it out, when another ar- 
row pierced his head, killing him instantly. She 
caught the standard as it fell from his hand, in 
the midst of a hail of stones and arrows falling 
all around her. Heeding none of these, she shook 
her standard at her assailants on the walls, cry- 
ing, ''Surrender the city to the King of Heaven 
and of France." 

Her men rallied around her trying to cross the 
moat, but the means they had with which to make 
it possible were insufficient, and, as night came 
on, with the unsolved task and so many slain, the 
soldiers grew weary and discouraged. 

She threw all her energy and devotion into the 
cause of laboring on. She had never failed be- 
fore and she would not fail now. But despite en- 
treaty and prayer, Eaoul de Gaucourt, an old sol- 



ON THE WAY TO PARIS 163 

dier, who knew nothing of the power of Faith and 
Enthusiasm as helpers in fighting battles, ordered 
retreat from the walls. 



5. Failure 

Near this spot, where she fought so valiantly 
for the liberation of Paris, is a great statue of 
the Maid of Orleans by Fremsiet. Paris is not 
the first nor the last of cities to abhor its saviors. 
\ The intelligence of the people has not yet ad- 
vanced enough to distinguish reliably between the 
benefactors and the assassins of individual minds. 

It is quite certain that the chief officers and fa- 
vorites of the King were not sorry to see her fail. 
In defiance of her orders they sounded the retreat. 
It was the death-knell of her earthly career. How- 
ever immortal in human history and saintly she 
was among the gods, that bugle call killed in her 
the sublime idea of her faith. God Himself can 
not force, or at least, there is no evidence that He 
ever violates His own order to force righteousness 
into unwilling minds, even when the unwillingness 
is the work of lies and liars. Shfe would not leave 
her task and a few brave souls remained with her 
in the now hopeless conditions. At last Gaucourt 
with two or three of his officers went and seized 
her, set her upon a horse and forcibly took her 
away. 

**By my Martin-baton," she cried in despair 
and rage, **the place could have fallen,'* 



164 JOAN OF ARC 

Sbe was taken to La Chapelle and given in 
charge of Jean d 'Anion. She had been seriously 
wonnded in the thigh by an arrow but had given 
it no heed. The wound was now dressed and from 
labor that would have exhausted any man, if not 
many men, she was sent to her room to sleep. 
But early in the morning, she was alive again 
with her former eagerness to serve her beloved 
France. She sent for AlenQon, entreating him to 
sound the bugles for another assault on the walls 
of Paris. Her Voices did not say so, but she knew 
of herself that she could win Paris back from 
England to France. 

She had enough friends to win her cause in the 
council, though Gaucourt violently opposed it and 
everything planned by the Maid. While they 
were discussing whether or not to follow the Maid, 
there arrived from Paris the Baron Montmorency 
and sixty noblemen, desiring not only to make 
peace with the King, but to join the army in an 
assault on Paris. This was so conclusive of the 
temper of Paris that they were about to decide 
for her when an order came from the King. He 
had heard of the disastrous failure before the 
walls of Paris, and he ordered AleuQon to bring 
her to him at Saint Denis. 

She obeyed, but so full of despairing wrath 
that she determined, when the retreating army 
had reached Saint Denis, she would cross the 
Seine over a bridge newly built there, and lead 
the volunteers of the army around to another at- 



ON THE WAY TO PARIS 165 



tack on Paris. But the King heard of this plan 
and that night he caused the bridge to be de- 
stroyed. 

6, Her Armor Returned to St. Denis 

The stupidity and folly of the King, court and 
captains could go no further and the betrayal of 
her faith could be no worse. In these hours of 
distress, her Voices came back as guides in her 
personal conduct. She was forbidden to stay 
where she had been taken, thus fatally restricted 
as the disturber of great men's plans, but despite 
all she could do or say, the King ordered her to 
await his royal pleasure. 

Full of heart-breaking despair, she took the 
armor, in which she had been wounded before 
Paris, and hung it up on a pillar before the Vir- 
gin, in the Abbey church of Saint Denis. It was 
her cry to God and Prance where the slogan of 
ancient victory had been *'God and Saint Denis.'* 
She wished to show by this that her work for the 
King as the inspired Daughter of God was ended. 

''If any one in the King's command," said a 
Burgundian writer, **had been as much of a man 
as Jeanne, Paris would have been in the greatest 
peril." 

Many of her faithful friends had gone resent- 
fully away from among her associates, or had been 
treacherously sent away to distant work. Her 
cause seemed to be lost in the weakness of the 



166 JOAN OF ARC ^ 

King and the antagonisms of Ms court. ''And 
thus," it was written at the time by Percival de 
Cagny, *'was the will of the Maid and the royal 
army broken.'* 

All fear of Charles now being dissipated, bri- 
gands and skirmishers were let loose by the Duke 
of Burgundy to pillage the towns that had sur- 
rendered to the Maid, and all her work was being 
rapidly undone. Even her armor, in which she 
had achieved all her victories as the Daughter 
of God, was carried away from the Abbey church 
in Saint Denis by the Cardinal-bishop of Win- 
chester. 

The whole country which had worshiped the 
Maid as their deliverer was now given over to 
such merciless pillage and plunder that not a 
laborer was left in the fields and famine was grip- 
ping fast every village in the land. La Pucelle 
had not brought them the deliverance they had 
believed and her name that had been a holy one 
on many lips now became accursed. Such were 
the results of the peace and the truce of peace 
which the King had made with the Duke of Bur- 
gundy. 

La Pucelle was virtually a prisoner in the King's 
care at Rheims, while he kept the peace with his 
good friend the Duke of Burgundy. Many of 
the King's favorites were in the pay of the wily 
Duke and there can be little doubt that the Duke 
had long been playing a game that was to win 
for himself the mastery of France. 



ON THE WAY TO PARIS 167 

7. The Name and Fame of the Angelic Maid 

' Persons of great vision often neglect little 
things and therefore appear to be inferior to those 
who attend ever faithfully to little things. \ Thus 
is a prophet without honor in his own country. 
Jeanne d'Arc was the center of love, admiration 
and wonder wherever she went. Books were be- 
ing written about her, she was preached about as 
a saint, images of her were being carried about 
as a protection from evil by all who could get 
them, and the King had a medal struck in her 
honor, bearing the words, ** Sustained by the coun- 
sels of God." Foreign potentates of many king- 
doms sent messengers and delegations to offer 
their respects and to pay their homage. The Duke 
of Milan tried to enlist her interest to recover his 
lost lands. She was addressed as ''The very hon- 
orable and devout Maid, sent by the King of 
Heaven for the redemption of France." 

But that was of no interest to the immortal Joan 
of Arc. Such adulation only wearied her. She 
denied it all. She longed for her Voices again. 
They were more to her than all the world. She 
required her chaplain always to tell her when he 
was to receive the children of the poor, and she 
was always there to encourage and help them. 
She gave all she had or could get to be distributed 
among the suffering. Her almoner protested that 
she gave too much and she replied that too much 
could not be given. 



168 JOAN OF ARC 

Jean d'Aulon asked her to describe the counsel 
that guided her life. He says that she replied, 
**My counsel is three; one voice stays with me 
always, another goes and comes, visiting me often, 
and with the third both deliberate all three as 
one.'^ In his comment we understand that she 
meant by the first, her conscience, by the second 
as being prayer, and that the third was God. 

Several of her chroniclers, and no one in all 
those former days was ever so much written about, 
say that she never was alone. There was always 
some lady with her of higli character and spotless 
reputation. She never received any kind of com- 
pany after sunset, and often some diplomatic vis- 
itor or gay young gentlemen of the court tried to 
win her favor with all the niceties of their courtly 
insinuation, but La Pucelle's modest self-posses- 
sion froze their impertinence and made them 
ashamed of their sacrilegious ambition. All the 
voluminous testimony agrees in almost every de- 
tail of her life that she was ever the same pure- 
minded, generous peasant girl who listened to the 
heavenly voices and cared for her flocks in the 
lovely green fields of Domremy. 

No less marvelous among her strange inspira- 
tions and instincts, unless we concede to her some 
unusual intelligence far beyond her youth and ex- 
perience, she had none of the superstitions, not 
even the most prevalent religious credulities that 
were then flourishing so rankly in the ignorance 
of the times. Many of the good people of Bour- 




A Symbolic painting of LaPucelle listening to her Voices, 
1600, now in the Cathedral of Rouen 



Made about 



ON THE WAY TO PARIS 169 

ges came to her with ailments or with crosses and 
chaplets for her touch. Jeanne would smile at 
them and say, *'I touch because you ask me, but 
why not you touch them? Your touch is good as 
mine. ' ' 

Some distinguished visitors once said, **You 
have no fear because the Lord will not allow you 
to be harmed." 

She vigorously replied^ **It is not so. My life 
is no more than that of any other soldier in the 
army." She reminded them of her wounds and 
that before going into battle she always prepared 
to meet God with a clean soul. 

Joan of Arc needs no halo of divinity to reveal 
her clearly as the most remarkable woman, if not 
even more than one of the noblest that ever lived. 
Her purity and kindness in the midst of her faith 
in right as the might of life disclose a supreme 
ideal of womanhood. 

8. The Peace of Inaction and Stupidity. 

Nothing could be more deadly to Joan of Arc 
than inaction in the face of great needs for work. 
The various captains who had fought under her 
inspiration were sent off on trivial expeditions, 
and they often tried to induce the King to let La 
Pucelle go with them but he would not consent. 
At last, so insistent was she that she be given 
some work to do to free France of its enemies, 
that an expedition was planned for her against 



170 JOAN OF ARC 

the English and Burgundians who were so fear- 
fully oppressing the people of the Upper Loire. 

A poorly equipped force of insufficient size and 
under the command of Sire d 'Albert, a brother- 
in-law of Tremouille, her enemy, was given her for 
a winter campaign against the strongest of the 
enemies' forces. 

In due time her expedition arrived at Saint- 
Pierre-le-Moustier, a strongly fortified town in the 
Upper Loire. It was defended by strong towers 
and a wide, deep moat. La Pucelle had said she 
was afraid of nothing but treachery. , The Arch- 
bishop of Rheims and the powerful favorite Tre- 
mouille had never lost a chance, even the most 
despicable, to hamper her operations, to weaken 
her means, and to poison her influence with the 
Eling. There had been treachery at every step 
and now it became bold. The army given her for 
this heavy task was small and in charge of a sub- 
ordinate officer unknown to Joan. 

The siege was begun without means and car- 
ried on with little support. The assault was be- 
gun spiritedly enough but almost at the first re- 
sponse from the garrison, the soldiers fled leaving 
Jeanne standing at the drawbridge with only four 
or five men near her. This is hardly explainable 
on any other theory than that it had been planned 
to have her captured there. But Jean d'Aulon, 
her squire, who was of her bodyguard, saw her 
there fighting alone, as if the army were still con- 
tinuing the assault. Though wounded and sup- 



ON THE WAY TO PARIS 171 

ported by crutches, seeing her peril, he mounted 
a horse in the pain of his wound, and, furious in 
dismay at this strange cowardice of the soldiers, 
ran his horse to her and brought her off to a place 
of safety. 

But she would not have it so! **I am not 
alone," she cried. *'A host of warriors are with 
me in the name of the Lord. To work! All the 
world! Bring faggots and logs to bridge the 
moat! We will take the town." It was like a 
vision from the ancient prophets of Israel. An- 
ion says he looked around but saw no one. She 
caught up her banner and returned to the assault. 

The retreating soldiers saw her and saw her 
banner waving toward the fortress. They forgot 
orders to retreat. They turned, gathering wood 
as they came to throw into the moat. The garri- 
son on the ramparts, seeing them returning with 
the Maid in their midst waving her banner, be- 
came panic-stricken. They abandoned the walls 
and fled out of the town by the other gate. The 
Maid's soldiers climbed with her over the walls 
and the fortress that was to be her doom of de- 
feat was her victory. The English and Burgun- 
dian commanders reported to their superiors that 
countless numbers of men appeared suddenly 
swarming toward them, and it seemed as if the 
whole world was coming over the walls. And so 
it was. All the great, good, coming world of social 
justice was alive in their souls, writing a revela- 
tion in the hope of man. 



172 JOAN OF ARC 

9. The Contest Between Treason and Faith 

Reginald Thierry, the King's surgeon, being 
with her, wrote that the hungry soldiers began 
to loot the town. The soldiers full of the lust of 
victory and hate toward the enemy became rob- 
bers. Word came to her of what was happening. 
She mounted her horse and sped down the street 
waving her banner against the enemy that was 
despoiling the meaning of her war. She stopped 
the looters in the midst of their fury, and one of 
the priests wrote how she drove the robbers out 
of the churches where they had gone for pillage, 
and made them restore all the goods. 

Jeanne wished to move on with her victorious 
followers to other conquests but La Tremouille, 
fearful of his hold on the King, and perhaps of 
the rich bribes he was most likely receiving from 
the Duke of Burgundy, threw every kind of a 
difficulty in her way. But she accepted all diffi- 
culties and endeavored to overcome them. 

She wrote letters of appeal to the towns she 
had delivered asking for supplies and munitions. 
These letters we can read in the archives of 
France. They do not have the old fire of confi- 
dence. She is weary and her poor soul is droop- 
ing from the sordid selfishness of those she is 
helping most. And she is only a child in years. 
Her letter to Riom she signs with her own hand, 
guided like a child by another who can write. She 
has never been taught to write. She seals that 



ON THE WAY TO PARIS 173 

letter in red wax making the impression with her 
thumb, and a dark hair is still to be seen, a pre- 
cious hair from the head of that Wonderful Wo- 
man, as happening to fall under the wax while it 
was still soft. 

The death-blow to be given her had been marked 
by her enemies for Saint Pierre, but it failed. 
The King's favorites were so malevolently jealous 
of her that they meant not to fail again. They 
tried another plan. Like many schemes of the 
present day, they sought to offer another **just 
as good," and so with a substitute to belittle her 
influence and kill her power. 

A woman was brought forward who claimed to 
have voices of superior insight to those of La Pu- 
celle. Jeanne went to see her, heard her through 
and advised her to go back to her husband and 
children. Brother Richard, the eccentric yet elo- 
quent mendicant friar, had become much im- 
pressed with the powers of divination possessed 
by Katherine, and he had caused the King to be 
much impressed. When the King asked La Pu- 
celle her opinion, she told him plainly that such 
claims were folly and any one making them was 
an impostor. It was the difference between su- 
perstition and faith, but treason could not see 
what it would not see, and the will of the court 
favorites was to have power, not truth. 



CHAPTER X 
THE VICTORY OF EVIL MINDS 

1. Nobility Conferred hy am Ignoble Court 

On November 24, 1429, Jeanne went with D'Al- 
bret, brother-in-law of Tremouille, to the siege of 
La Charite. The poverty of equipment was such 
as to make valor absurd. The Maid tried to lead 
a storming party but they were driven off and 
were ordered to retreat. The siege was given 
up and the report went back that the Maid had 
failed. 

But, however the Archbishop of Rheims and 
Georges de la Tremouille might plot for her dis- 
grace and downfall, the King found it profitable 
to keep up her prestige in foreign courts. On 
that account he decided to ennoble her and her 
family. This occurred December 29, 1429, at the 
King's Chateau, the same place where Charles, 
many years after, starved to death for fear of 
being poisoned by his son Louis XI. There is no 
reason to believe otherwise than that the King, 
in his understanding of affairs, was sincere in de- 
siring to show his appreciation. His blunders and 
failures were from the complaisant stupidity of 
his own disposition, his greater pleasure in liv- 

174 



VICTORY OF EVIL MINDS 175 

ing at peace with his favorites, and his confidence 
in the intrigues of diplomacy being more powerful 
than his sword or the continued achievements of 
the Wonderful Woman. 

Joan loved the King as the righteous represen- 
tative of her beloved France in the name of the 
King of Heaven. For the cause he represented to 
her people, she endured everything and labored on 
for his good. Whatever she thought of his un- 
worthiness, there was no other hope for France. 

The causes and meaning of the ennoblement are 
expressed in the proclamation of the King briefly 
as follows : 

*' Charles, by grace of God King of France, in 
the perpetual memory of an event : to give glory 
to the High and Divine Wisdom, for the many 
and signal favors which it has pleased Him to 
confer upon us by the famous ministry of our 
dear and well-beloved, the Maid Joanne d'Arc 
of Domremy, and which, by the aid of Divine 
Clemency, we hope to see multiplied : we judge 
it fit and opportune to elevate, in a manner wor- 
thy of our royal majesty, this Maid and all her 
family, not in recognition of her services only, 
but also to publish the praises of God, so that 
being thus made illustrious, she may leave to 
posterity the monument of a recompense ema- 
nating from our royal liberality to perpetuate 
to all ages the Divine glory, and the fame of 
so many graces.'* 



176 JOAN OF ARC _^ 

The unrestricted ennoblement of Jeanne and 
her entire family, together with the exemption of 
her two native villages from taxation forever, was 
the greatest of testimonials to her service, but it 
could add nothing to her real friends, who be- 
lieved her to be ennobled above all earthly things 
by the King of Heaven. It only confirmed Jeanne 
with a place in court as a rival to the King's 
worldly favorites. But with all the pious world- 
liness of the King he tried in his own light and 
way to be loyal and appreciative for her personal 
services to him. Her higher ideal probably never 
appeared in any of his worldly-minded visions. 

3. The Worldly Glory of Her Fame 

Joan of Arc was now a world character. She 
had the equipment and income of a count. Girls 
of noble birth were her attendants. The King 
required that she wear the gorgeous uniforms of 
the princes and grandees. Nevertheless she ex- 
pressed herself as having been happier in the jer- 
kin of leather thongs and the trappings of a shep- 
herd maid in the fields of Domremy. 

For four months she remained at the French 
court in the height of worldly glory. During this 
time her enemies, hating her severe piety and 
the galling moral restraints she held fast upon 
their licentious gaiety, began to organize them- 
selves against her. 

The unscrupulous fortune teller, Katharine of 



VICTORY OF EVIL MINDS 177 

Roehelle, whose envy and malice against the Maid 
paused at nothing however vile that might do in- 
jury, was put forward into the King's notice 
whenever it could be done. She claimed that she 
could influence the Duke of Burgundy to make 
peace, and Charles always believed that the 
scheming Duke was about to yield to him. But 
La Pucelle insisted that the only peace possible 
with Burgundy was at the point of the sword. 

Meanwhile, the Duke of Burgundy continued to 
strengthen himself and the King's powers cor- 
respondingly were weakened. Between the schem- 
ing aggressions of the Duke and the inactivity of 
the King the lot of the people grew worse and 
worse into a desperation more and more hopeless. 
Jeanne visited many places trying to arouse a 
united effort to bring peace in some way to her 
mortally suffering France. 

The testimony of many women who slept in her 
chamber was that, often from month to month, 
when she thought them all asleep, the Maid would 
arise, and kneeling in the darkness, implore God 
for light and a way to bring peace to her beloved 
France. 

The whole country had now become a vast scene 
of reprisal, retaliation, pillage and plunder by 
raiding parties from first one side and then the 
other. No mercy was given by the King's sol- 
diers or by the enemy. Joan's beloved troops were 
now little more than guerilla bands killing and 
plundering wherever they could strike the enemy. 



178 JOAN OF ARC 

The Duke of Burgundy no longer placed any 
restraints on tlie Picards of his army. He was 
busy celebrating his marriage to the Princess of 
Portugal at Bruges, in a manner more magnifi- 
cent than had ever before been seen in Flanders. 
But, during this so-called truce of peace between 
Charles and the Duke, the villages under Charles, 
within reach of the border were so often pillaged 
that they were ready for any master who could 
protect them. Thus Charles was being under- 
mined, so that the territory restored by the Maid 
to the King was cursing him and the day they 
lost the better protection of the English. 

3. An Example of Faith 

It was about this time, to illustrate the mon- 
strous fanaticism of the age, that Pierrone of 
Brittany, a little peasant girl, whom La Pucelle 
had befriended, fell into the hands of the theo- 
logical doctors in the regions occupied by the ene- 
mies of the French King. Because she unceas- 
ingly declared the praise of the Maid and would 
not be stopped, she was brought before them on 
a charge of blasphemy. They tried to make her 
say that Joan was a witch and she stoutly declared 
to their faces that the Maid of Orleans was sent 
from God. They led her to the stake on the third 
day of September, 1430. But the poor little Bre- 
ton girl had caught the eternal faith of La Pu- 
celle and she bore witness with her blood for the 



VICTORY OF EVIL MINDS 179 

name and the cause of one she had seen to know, 
and what she knew she could not cast out as un- 
known. Like the one she loved so much as to die 
for her good name, this Little One of the Master's 
fold kept the faith, and those who tried to make 
her break it were anathema in the final reckoning 
of the Church. 

The hideous character of religious fanaticism, 
in which the worst torture was used for purposes 
and to obtain results that were far less reasonable 
and merciful than any brutality of beasts, has not 
changed since then as to the natural development 
of men 's will. It does not give its culture to others 
for their good but for its own increased strength. 
The liquid flame and poison gas used to advance 
the dynastic power of Germany in the European 
War, with the hideous methods of frightfulness 
and the still more hideous repudiation of moral 
law, reveal the unchanged nature of the will to 
mastery for the sake of a master, whose people 
believe themselves to be a divinely chosen people 
having a divinely-given master as the empire-sov- 
ereign of the earth. 

The will to power shown by the military-ecclesi- 
astic organization of the dark ages and the dynas- 
tic-capitalistic-socialism of Middle-Europe domin- 
ion, are the same forms of will as shown in the 
predatory greed of speculative business in Amer- 
ica. It is the same merciless, burning, suffocating 
beastliness of will as the divine right of self, 



180 JOAN OF ARC 

driving on to its inhuman mastery over the in- 
alienable rights of the helpless child of the streets, 
or in manipulation of the public mind for political 
or party purposes, against the moral right and 
vital need of the people to know and to do the 
truth. 



4. The Self-interest of Courts and Kings 

The tortures, abominable and ferocious, that 
were on the way through the jungles of that in- 
human time to seize La Pucelle were no-ne so ter- 
rible and painful to her as the savage ravage- 
ment of her people to which the enemy were daily 
subjecting them. 

The break in her decision came at last when she 
received a letter from the terror-stricken people 
at Rheims. The Duke was now on the march with 
a reorganized army to join the newly-arrived 
forces of the English at Paris. Utter disaster for 
all that had been won was moving upon them. 

Her promise io them was thus in brief: ''Know 
that you shall not be besieged if I can stay your 
enemies; and if I meet them not, and they come 
against you, shut your gates, and I will shortly 
be with you, and drive them so hard that they 
shall not know whither to betake themselves.'^ 

Twelve days later in answer to another cry for 
help from the approaching Burgundians, she re- 
plied, '*I beg and pray you, my dear friends, that 
you will guard your city well for the King, and 



VICTORY OF EVIL MINDS 181 



keep good watch. You shall very soon hear of my 
good news." 

Almost superhuman energy and skill were now 
put forth by Joan in her efforts to have the King 
see that the Burgundian truce was a subterfuge, 
that the cause of the King was being betrayed, 
and that he must meet war with war, and not with 
promises, if there was to be any more a kingdom 
of France. 

Her failures in battle she knew had been 
through treachery and her loss of influence over 
the King was more treachery. Her prayers and 
tears were unavailing. His three most trusted 
councilors, the Archbishop Gaucourt and Tre- 
mouille, all of them assured the King that their 
diplomacy was succeeding and all they needed 
was to fulfill the terms of the truce when Bur- 
gundy would swear allegiance to him and drive 
the English out of Paris. 

There is a possibility that these complacent 
pacifists were themselves deceived, but it seems 
more merciful to concede that they were rational 
men and therefore traitors in the pay of the en- 
emy of the King. 

La Pucelle's devotion to the King was her de- 
votion to France as her religious mission on earth 
for the King of Heaven. Her heart was torn with 
pain at seeing the success of treachery over the 
deceived King. He ordered her to cease from op- 
posing the Duke. The bitter struggle was between 
obedience to the intelligence of the King expressed 



182 JOAN OF ARC 

in Ms commands, and the rights of the King as 
lodged in the actual truth of events for the cause 
of France. In response to her higher duty she 
had fled as a peasant girl from Domremy. God 
had verified her voices and fulfilled the divine 
cause with her. Could she now do less? 

It was the hour of great decision. 

Jean d 'Anion, Bertrand de Poulangy, her faith- 
ful brother Pierre, her chaplain, and Jean de 
Metz, with her company of bodyguards, were her 
near associates who remained true. They had her 
confidence in the sublime duty that could not be 
seen by a favorite-blinded King. 

5. Away to the Defense of the People of Frcmce 

Brother Richard, believing in the divine powers 
of Katherine of Rochelle, was now the center of 
religious influence among the court-enemies of 
Jeanne. Most of the watchful ones had gone with 
these two strange persons to Orleans where the 
Lent sermon was being preached by Brother Ri- 
chard. 

It was a good time for the flight of Jeanne from 
the worldly follies of the King's court. All the 
grand honors had faded away before the sunrise 
of her duty to France and God. 

The hour had come when something must be 
done. Her intimate associates, at a given signal, 
bestrode their horses as if they were away for a 
merry ride. But, underneath the robes of Joan 



VICTORY OF EVIL MINDS 183 

of Arc was the armor of a warrior battling for 
the cause of France and God. Her Voices had 
told her that she had a year and a little more to 
live and there was now not much more time to 
work for F*rance. 

They rode away without farewell to any one, 
away to stop the spear-thrusts in the sides of 
France. The Maid never saw her beloved King 
again. She left him alone in his woeful confi- 
dence. But as much as she went forward to ful- 
fill faith, it was as if she were leaving hope be- 
hind. Her enemies at court could show the weak- 
willed man that their predictions to him were true. 
Joan of Arc was false to the King I She cared 
nothing for his appreciation I Had he not en- 
nobled this peasant girl! Made her the equal of 
his favorites ! Given her a place among the high- 
er human beings ! And now she was destroying 
the truce of peace in which diplomacy was to heal 
the wounds of France! 

The Maid's Voices had whispered long before 
that she had not long to live. She heard them 
again saying that before midsummer she would 
be a prisoner in the hands of her enemies. Her 
associates all testified that she had told them this. 
She began to feel that her mission was ended. 
She no longer tried to command the troops. She 
did not go into the councils planning their expedi- 
tions. She remained in almost constant prayer. 
Her one wish was that she would not have to suf- 
fer the cruelties of her enemies long. She had 



184 JOAN OF ARC 

felt her friends slipping away and the people in 
their suffering had lost faith in her. But the 
stunning revelation was yet to come to her, that, 
with all the supreme honors and costly gifts that 
had been showered upon her, there was not left 
enough friendship to pay her captive's ransom 
anywhere in all the world. So had her enemies 
succeeded. \ So do they always succeed wherever 
they can pervert as the liar despoils the mind. 
Like not only produces like in times of peace but 
it requires like to kill like in times of war. \ 

6. The Last Battle of the Warrior Woman 

Joan of Arc had yielded up her authority as 
given from God, but she was never less tireless 
in the labor of a warrior in the army for freedom 
to the people of France. She was at the front in 
numerous battles, but she believed the scenes of 
life were closing around her. 

The fatal time came when she heard that the 
siege of Compiegne had begun. She mounted her 
horse crying, **I will go to see my good friends of 
Compiegne." A great bronze statue of the Maid 
was erected there in recent times with these brave 
words upon it. 

She was warned that the roads were so infested 
with the enemy that she could not get through, 
but, in her faith for the great need, there was no 
such word as * * could not ' ' to any right thing. She 
braved the dangerous way and after several thrill- 



VICTORY OF EVIL MINDS 185 

ing escapes arrived with her bodyguard of faith- 
ful friends. 

Many years after, when children had grown old, 
several old men and women testified that they, 
with other children of the poor, were at early 
mass in the Church of Saint Jacques in Com- 
piegne, when the Heavenly Maid came in and 
knelt before the altar. They were rapt in wonder 
at the glorious woman when she arose, and stand- 
ing by the pillar, looking back at the altar-image 
of the Crucified One, said, ' * My children and deal' 
friends, I tell you that I have now learned that 
I am to be sold and betrayed and will soon be 
delivered over to death. I beg you to pray God 
for me, for nevermore shall I have power to serve 
the realm of France.*' 

Then she became silent, and as she told them, 
a voice said to her, "Take all things well, for 
thus it must be. God will aid thee." 

At this she turned to the sorrowing hearts 
about her, saying, **My children and dear friends, 
pray for me." 

The witnesses who heard her moaning at the 
altar in the Church of Saint James at Compiegne, 
could not have invented the words they testify 
under oath, in name of their souPs salvation, that 
they heard her say. Those words bear witness of 
their own truth, so life-like are they in harmony 
with what we know of her. She had often urged 
her King and her generals to hasten her work for 



186 JOAN OF ARC 

she had only a year and a little more to live, and 
time was on the wing. 

At five o'clock that afternoon, May 23, 1429, 
she with her faithful officers commanding about 
five hundred men, rode out of the town for a sur- 
prise attack on the besieging camp at Margny. 
To make them safe in case of being driven back, 
cannons were planted on the walls, and bowmen 
were arranged in boats below in the stream, to 
come to their rescue. 

The surprise was successful as the Picards ex- 
pecting no attack had laid aside their armor. But 
their officers having met for a council with other 
officers on the bluffs above saw the banner of the 
Maid coming through the gate at Compiegne, and 
they hastened to bring on the nearest companies 
of Flemings and Burgundians. 

With all her old heroism the Maid of Orleans 
rallied the men to withstand the new assault. 
But the odds were too great. The men wavered 
and broke. 

**Make for the gates or you are lost," cried the 
captains. 

But the Maid knew no such thing as defeat. 

** Silence!" she cried to the captains. *' Follow 
me and strike." 

The fleeing soldiers turned. They drove the 
enemy back in disorder, when a freshly arrived 
company of English struck them unexpectedly 
from a side attack. Her soldiers gave way in 
utter rout. 



VICTORY OF EVIL MINDS 187 

7. The Capture 

English and Picards, seeing the banner of the 
Maid faltering and falling in the midst of the 
panic-stricken mass, strove with one another for 
the capture of so great a prize. 

An eye-witness says that the Maid was the last 
to yield every foot of battle-ground. Her brave 
associates rallied around her. ' ' She was the most 
valiant of her band. Doing deeds beyond the 
nature of woman. ' ' 

Never had woman done such deeds of valor in 
any history known since history began. She 
fought her way to the drawbridge through an on- 
slaught of soldiers from all sides. A great crowd 
of fugitives were there choking the way in frantic 
endeavor to get over the moat and through the 
gate, back into the city. She fought more furi- 
ously than ever to give her friends the chance for 
escape. Then suddenly the drawbridge was lifted, 
the gate was closed and the few remaining ones 
outside were left to their fate. 

Whether this happened in a panic, as some his- 
torians suppose, or whether the governor, as gen- 
erally believed, thus saw a chance to be rid of 
her interference with his plans, there has never 
been any way to know. But De Flavy, who was 
accused of closing the gates against her, had a 
notorious reputation as a man without conscience 
or honor. He knew that she had left the royal 
court against the orders of the King. There is 



188 JOAN OF ARC 

every presumption that her day of betrayal had 
come. 

Seeing that it was hopeless to remain where she 
was, she gathered the remnant of her guard and 
tried to fight her way arotind the moat to the 
other gate. Valiantly they strove on against 
overwhelming odds almost half the way. There 
her enemies reached her, when all her defenders 
had fallen. 

One seized her horse's bridle. Another canght 
a firm hold upon her wrist, but it was a Picard 
archer who dragged her from the saddle by her 
scarlet cloak. 

"Give yourself up to me," cried an officer rid- 
ing through the crowd. *'Give me your faith, '* 
called Lyonel of Vendome over their heads. 

'*I have given my faith to another than you,'* 
she cried out sharply above all the tumult, mean- 
ing to God and the King, **and that oath will I 
keep." And that faith, plighted to righteousness 
above all the wills of men, she did keep, as only 
the faith-keeping soul is empowered to be true. 

''The year and a little more" was drawing 
rapidly near to the most wonderful battle ever 
fought between faith and will. 

Believing as she did that this capture, doubtless 
on the way to death, was to come to pass soon, 
yet she went on courting every danger where she 
believed she could do her country any good. No- 
where in human history is there a greater example 



VICTORY OF EVIL MINDS 189 

of devotion and courage, than this wonderful 
woman, the bravest of the brave. 

Theodore Roberts thus describes his vision of 
the Maid, as the Spirit of Womanhood in the 
midst of evil, warring against the Lords of wrong: 

"Thunder of riotous hoofs over the quaking sod ; 

Clash of reeking squadrons, steel-capped, iron shod; 

The White Maid and the White Horse and the flapping ban- 
ner of God. 

Black hearts riding for money, red hearts riding for fame; 

The Maid who rides for France, and the King who rides for 
shame. 

Gentlemen, fools, and a saint riding in Christ's high name! 

Like a story from some old book, that battle of long ago; 

Shadows the poor French King and the might of his English 
foe; 

Shadows the charging nobles, and the archers kneeling a- 
row — 

But a flame in my heart and my eyes, the Maid with the ban- 
ner of snow." 



8. Views from the Men of Her Time 

The last fight for France was the beginning of 
her fight for the world, and this was greater than 
all that had gone before on her wonderful way. 

George Chastellain, a Burgundian warrior and 
a bitter enemy, thus writes of her capture at Com- 
piegne: ''The maiden, beyond the nature of 
woman, endured to do mighty deeds, and labored 
sore to save her company from loss, remaining 
in the rear of her retreating force as the most 



190 JOAN OF ARC 

valiant of her troop ; there where fortune granted 
it, for the end of her glory, and the last time of 
her bearing arms." 

Joan of Arc did not lack for fame from Orleans 
to Compiegne, as, during that time, all the world 
was filled with the wonder of her work. So great 
was the fear of her on the side of the enemy, that 
the severest decrees had to be issued to stop de- 
serting and to prevent the demoralization of the 
army. In foreign friendly nations, the most noted 
kings, princes and high ecclesiasts vied with one 
another in doing her honor. Historians consider 
it indisputable that if Charles had given her king- 
like energy or support, all France would have 
been cleared of its enemies in a few months, and 
perhaps all Christendom united around her to 
rescue the Holy Land from the Turks. 

Monstrelet, secretary to the Duke of Burgundy, 
wrote that there was never knight nor captain in 
the French army so much feared as the Maid of 
Orleans. Her capture was worth more to them 
than to capture an army. 

An old English Chronicle records that when the 
English secured possession of the Maid, they 
''were more rejoiced than if they had gained all 
the gold of Lombardy." No more proclamations 
would now be needed to stop the desertions from 
the English army, occurring so extensively from 
fear of her. It is notable that, through all history, 
the greatest destroyers of right and the worst 
murderers of men have always claimed the clos- 



VICTORY OF EVIL MINDS 191 

est alliance with God. \ They were doubtless sin- 
cere enough in their egomania, as their God, being 
a God of might, would associate only with might 
and give His aid only to masteries. 

The Duke of Burgundy hastened to inform his 
allies of the capture of the Maid and the follow- 
ing is part of his proclamation: 

*'By the pleasure of our blessed Creator, the 
thing has so happened, and such favor has been 
done us, that she who is called the Maid, has 
been taken. We write these tidings for your 
great joy and comfort in them, that you will 
give thanks and praise to our Creator who by 
His blessed pleasure deigns to guide our enter- 
prises to the good of our Lord the King, and 
the relief of his loyal subjects." 

9. Explanation of the Great News 

As the vesper bells now came to the ear of the 
captive girl, she no longer heard within their 
music the Voices saying, ' ' Go on, go on, daughter 
of God, go on!" Her Voices now said, "Suffer all 
for God is with you to the end." That is the voice 
of *' justification by faith," It is the belief that 
what has happened has been from the source of 
truth and that the order of truth is the order of 
almighty and inevitable moral law.'\ 

The fall of a King could not cause more re- 
joicing among his enemies than the capture of 
Joan of Arc brought to the sordid masters whom 



192 JOAN OF ARC 

she had restrained in their greed and in their op- 
pression of the poor. 

The Archbishop of Rheims threw all his power- 
ful influence into an explanation that her fall was 
merited because she had become too proud of 
glory! The hideous excuse to the licentious 
throng that God had abandoned her for her pride 
was quickly accepted, and then it was easy to say 
that God had never been the source of her success. 

A shepherd boy from the mountains of Gevau- 
dun was brought in with the sign of the stigmata, 
that is, the bleeding wounds of the Savior, who 
was accepted as a prophet, saying the Maid had 
been captured by her enemies because she had per- 
sisted in doing her own will instead of the will 
of God. 

The Archbishop quoted this with his sanction 
as the reason why the people should not grieve 
or pray for her. 

This dreadful letter, written to Orleans and 
other cities she had rescued, had great weight be- 
cause it was sent by the spiritual adviser of the 
King. He hated her for believing that she should 
take her orders from God rather than from him, 
who was a real official of God. This may ex- 
plain much that brought all her love and wisdom 
and labor to nothing at that time, and ended in 
her capture by those she had fought in the name 
of France and God. 



CHAPTER XI 

HOW SELF-INTEREST DECIDES QUES- 
TIONS OF RIGHT AND WRONG 

1. Ransom Money 

Two days after her capture, tlie news reached 
Paris. On the following day, May 26, by author- 
ity of the University of Paris, a letter was writ- 
ten to the Duke of Burgundy, in the name and 
under the seal of Martin Billormi, vicar-general 
of the Inquisition, demanding that the Maid of 
Orleans he at once surrendered to the Holy Of- 
fice, to be tried for various heretical crimes 
against the honor of God. 

The Duke made no reply, for he believed her 
to be worth any king's ransom, and he evidently 
expected Charles to be willing to give anything 
in his kingdom for her freedom and restoration. 

Some think that the Duke might have had some 
feelings of knightly honor against giving so 
knightly a person of such unimpeachable chivalry 
over to such bitter foes that they would try her 
as a witch and burn her at the stake. He may 
have had enough of nobility in him to appreciate 
her as a worthy antagonist fully entitled to all the 

193 



194 JOAN OF ARC 

protection of an honorable prisoner taken in a 
Christian war. 

The Duke, no less than all others knew that, 
whatever superstition had said of her, or what- 
ever she had assumed to be more than the author- 
ized representatives of God, she had been a noble 
warrior, a generous conqueror, an unsullied wo- 
man, and above all unmistakably the soul of res- 
toration for the kingdom of France. 

Jean of Luxembourg, who had held her as his 
prisoner, refused to give her up unless he received 
fair ransom money. 

But she had enemies at court, and the King was 
never known to move for any person or thing, not 
even for his crown of France, where the opposi- 
tion was any way insistent. He was the pacifist 
among kings, the non-resistant mind in whose 
hands were the fortunes of life for a nation. 

As the measure of ransom money fell in the 
estimates of Jeanne's captor, his respect for her 
lessened and the brutish resentment in him pre- 
vailed. 

We can not know how much to believe concern- 
ing the shame or villainy in her treatment, from 
the various stories of the times, but since her 
enemies were fed on the slanders made to ruin 
her influence, she may have been treated as foully 
as the worst that has been told. But even these 
enemies bear witness that neither schemes, fraud 
nor violence could break her spirit of faith nor 
corrupt her ideal of saintly womanhood. 



RIGHT AND WRONG 195 

2. Sold to the Highest Bidder 

Jean of Luxembourg, who was a nephew of the 
Duke, could get no money from the court of 
France. The English court did not show any in- 
terest because their needs were all served in her 
being a prisoner away from participation in the 
war. The Inquisition could not organize any 
movement to put her on trial for sorcery or her- 
esy, because there were numerous powerful pre- 
lates who believed, and who, like the Inquisitor 
of Toulouse, did not hesitate to assert that Jeanne 
d'Arc was unimpeachably a good Christian and 
Catholic. 

The University was renowned as having the or- 
thodox scholarship of that age. It threw its in- 
fluence wherever it could add to its prestige and 
power. A scholarly priest, Pierre Cauchon, who 
had been Bishop of Beauvais, and was driven 
from there by the Maid's army, was now in high 
favor with the University, and had become an 
official member of the English Council. He had 
secured his degree of Doctor of Arts and Canon 
Law and had been made rector in 1403 of the 
University of Paris. The capture having been 
made in his diocese, he put forward a claim to 
her and the University lent all its influence, in- 
trigue and power to support him in his claim. 
He had been most malignant in his hate of the 
Maid, and had written much proclaiming the 
wicked policy of Charles in profiting by the sor- 



196 JOAN OF ARC 

ceries of "the Armagnac witcli.'' Therefore, the 
University was unanimous in proclaiming him as 
the rightful judge of the captured woman. He 
had suffered from her Anti-Christ powers and 
therefore was the best qualified to sift the evi- 
dence against her! 

The English council had been given charge of 
the most noted French prisoners, but it was three 
months before it made any move to secure cus- 
tody of Jeanne d'Arc. Probably this move was 
caused by rumors that the Maid had more than 
once almost succeeded in escaping, and that a 
powerful rescue party was being organized among 
her friends. They also had little faith in the Duke 
of Burgundy. 

Pierre Cauchon, fugitive Bishop of Beauvais, 
was the prime mover in every plan to secure the 
Maid. On July 24, in great pomp and circum- 
stance, he arrived among the besiegers around 
Compiegne. He was accompanied by an envoy of 
the University, and an apostolic notary. He 
loudly proclaimed the Maid to be a witch, an idol- 
atress and a heretic. Under seal of the English 
King, they brought the summons. 

With all this array of authority, the Bishop of 
Beauvais demanded, ''That the woman, who is 
commonly called Jeanne the Maid, prisoner, be 
sent to the King to be delivered to the Church, 
to take her trial, because she is suspected and 
accused of having committed many crimes, such 



BIGHT AND WRONG 197 

as sorceries, idolatries, invocation of demons and 
many other things touching onr faith and against 
it. Considering this, she ought not to be regarded 
as a prize of war, nevertheless, for the remuner- 
ation of those who took and have kept her, the 
King will liberally give to them the sum of six 
thousand francs, and to her captor, he will assign 
a pension of two or three hundred lires." The 
total sum in modern values represents probably 
about one hundred thousand dollars. 

The money was supplied by the English Regent 
in France and was finally accounted for by a bur- 
densome tax on Normandy. 

3. The Justice of Wills Organized for Power and 
Masters/ 

Some idea of the value named for La Pucelle 
is seen when the cash paid for her was about five 
times the amount customary for the ransom of a 
King. The price of prisoners, like other commod- 
ities, was quite well regulated by supply and de- 
mand. As usual, the powerful lost no money, the 
common people had to pay the price. She was a 
prisoner of war, but she was sold like property 
and was not ransomed. Thus everything done 
against her was always illegal and wrong. It was 
as if she, as the personification of faith, were 
intended by Providence to represent the disorder 
and unreason of will in the affairs of man. Every 
move in the process against her was in full vio- 



198 JOAN OF ARC 

lation of all custom but also of both tbe ecclesi- 
astical and civil law. 

A subjoined item in the ecclesiastical demand 
left no doubt as to what would be her fate. It 
stated that any points at issue would be submit- 
ted to learned doctors in theology and canon-law, 
and to experts in all matters of jurisprudence, so 
**that it may be wisely, piously, and maturely 
done, to the exaltation of the faith, and the in- 
struction of many who have been deceived or mis- 
led on account of this woman.'' False facts thus 
accompany false reasoning in the breeding of 
more monstrous facts for the perpetuation of the 
ancient meaning of hell. 

The University of Paris in a long letter to the 
Duke of Burgundy, very humbly yet vehemently 
demanded that** the Maid be put into the hands of 
justice, duly to take her trial for the idolatries 
and scandals which by her means have come on 
this kingdom." 

Eeciting the awful wickedness of this woman, 
the University asserted that "so great a wrong 
to the holy faith, so enormous a peril, disadvan- 
tage, and injury to the people of this kingdom, 
has not happened within the memory of man." 

To leave no influence unused that the Maid be 
delivered over to *'the reverend father in God, 
the Lord Bishop of Beauvais," the University 
also wrote to Jean of Luxembourg. 

**Very noble, honored and powerful lord," it 
flatteringly began, "your noble prudence under- 



RIGHT AND WRONG 199 

stands well all good Catholic kniglits ought first 
to employ their might and power in the service of 
God, and afterwards for the public good/' 

The God-idea was a great Will-idea against 
those judged to he unorthodox, and it knew noth- 
ing of the faith that worked for the public good. 

This idea of the public good being separate and 
secondary to the service directed by the author- 
ized representatives of God, was the thing that 
at last brought on the conflict between political 
organizations and orthodox organizations, in 
which the divine right of kings first fought down 
the divine rights of ecclesiastical masteries and 
then had to yield to the divine right of the people 
whose voice finally became known as **the voice 
of God." 



4. Reason as the Tool of Selfishness 

The letter to Joan's captor was long and argu- 
mentative. It asserted that, through the Maid, 
"the honor of God has been beyond measure af- 
fronted, the faith excessively wounded, and 
through whose means idolatries, errors, bad doc- 
trines, and other inestimable evils have come 
upon this kingdom." 

This recital of wrongs done by a woman to the 
French-English empire and God was far worse 
than those enumerated in the American Declara- 
tion of Independence against England. It grossly 
libeled the eulogy Shakespeare wrote for man 



200 JOAN OF ARC 

when lie said, ''How noble in reason!" But, in 
the definition of God, such beastly minds may not 
have been in men, whatever their form, i All au- 
tocracy of will is a tiger that crushes its innocent 
prey for food with which to grow strength for 
greater masteries. 

The innumerable misdeeds perpetrated by this 
woman against ''our mild Creator" were alleged 
to be an intolerable offense against the Divine 
Majesty. This knowledge of God's attitude to- 
ward La Pucelle did not come through any in- 
tuition of voices, but it had been all reasoned out 
and made into an infallible code of God. 

The University of Paris and the Lord Bishop 
of Beauvais were ferocious enough in their zeal 
to bring every art and force to bear, but the Duke 
and his nephew did not consider the time at hand. 
The delegation went back without her. Mean- 
while, there is no record that any attempt was 
ever made anywhere by any one to ransom or re- 
store her. Many theories have been offered why 
this was so, but none seem to be sufficient for the 
situation. 

The Catholic Encyclopedia says: "No words 
can adequately describe the disgraceful ingrati- 
tude and apathy of Charles and his advisers in 
leaving the Maid to her fate. If military force 
had not availed, they had prisoners, like the Earl 
of Suffolk, in their hands, for whom she would 
have been exchanged." 

Hearing of the negotiations for selling her to 




JEANNE IN PRISON 



RIGHT AND WRONG 201 

the English Council or to the Bishop of Beauvais, 
Joan made an attempt to escape, by tearing away 
one of the planks in her prison wall. We have no 
consistent details describing this attempt but it 
was almost successful, and she was taken away to 
Beaurevoir. There she was under the care of the 
good old Countess of Ligny who selected one of 
the knightliest of her young men to make love to 
Jeanne and thus in marriage to save her from her 
enemies, but the Maid treated him so earnestly 
as merely a friend that he could not make any 
advance and so gave it up. 

Haimond de Macy, was this handsome and noble 
cavalier. Whether he acted so as a test, or from 
love of her, is not surely known, but he testified 
that he endeavored to gain her affection, and that 
every attempt at familiarity was turned aside. 
In writing of this after her death, he said: ''She 
was indeed of modest bearing, both in word and 
deed. I believe her to be in Paradise." 

She was the daughter of a superior faith, and 
was now on the swift way foretold to be little 
more than a year of life, and then a great triumph, 
the triumph of sainthood for all time, the saint- 
hood of loyalty to faith in our infinite humanity. 

5. When Death Seems Better Than Life 

During the period of captivity before her trial 
there is no consecutive story and we know of it 
only by incidents here and there told in divers 



202 JOAN OF ARC 

ways and assigned to various times. A few of 
these are worthy of noting without attempt at 
historical consistency or order. 

La Pucelle was allowed to climb to the top of 
the tower where she could look out for hours over 
the beautiful fields of Picardy. What thoughts 
and visions filled her mind during these sad mus- 
ings only her tortured soul could ever know. No 
doubt she often looked at the sky that lowered far 
away over Chinon and wondered why she never 
heard from the King. What did she think of Or- 
leans, of Tours, of Blois, of Rheims, and the other 
cities she had delivered in such unparalleled hero- 
ism from the invader? Surely there were hosts 
of heavenly visitors about her, who had given 
their lives for her cause. Sure it was if she had 
been at Chinon and the King had been where she 
was now prisoner in the tower, what prodigies of 
valor she would have done for his rescue. 

She prayed but we do not know the burden of 
her prayer; she grieved but we do not know the 
pain of her grief; she loved but we do not know 
where her love was wounded unto death. \ We look 
back through five hundred years into that dark- 
ened, blinded time and wonder without relief at 
the minds of men. Where now in her despair 
were the heroes who had fought so long at her 
side? Where was AlenQon and La Hire and Du- 
nois? Where were her brothers and the noble 
family at Domremy? Something is wrong with 
history. It could not have been so! Something 



RIGHT AND WRONG 203 

we do not know, for some reason we do not know, 
staged that more than human struggle between 
faith and will. 

Meanwhile, it is on record that her enemies were 
haggling back and forth over the price for her 
blood. The French King's ministers were busy 
blackening her name. The King himself was at 
peace, though it is said that he grieved much when 
she was dead. It may have been so. He was 
never an aggressively bad man. It was the vul- 
ture's peace. It preferred to live on the remains 
of the dead. He was a man of peace, of peace at 
any price. Six years later, when the Duke of 
Burgundy had I'ost beyond hope all his dreams of 
dominion, the enfeebled intriguer made peace with 
the King, and France fell like a wounded, starv- 
ing and exhausted animal before his royal door. 

In the midst of her captivity in the tower, her 
only friend there, the Countess of Ligny died» 
Then came the news that Compiegne was about 
to be starved into submission, and the besiegers 
had sworn to put all the people to the sword, 
sparing only the children under seven. At the 
same time, her most dreaded enemy and most 
malignant foe arrived with a new proposition to 
buy her from her captors. The news was now 
carried to Jeanne that she was at last sold to the 
infamous Pierre Cauchon, who was then at the 
castle. 

This infamous thing seemed impossible and the 
fatal desertion seemed worst in the darkest hour 



204 JOAN OF ARC 

when France needed her most. In unbearable ter- 
ror, she ran to the tower, and climbed the steps, 
crying, *'0 God, let me die now I'* 

Never pausing, she stretched out her arms to- 
ward her beloved France in supplication and 
went on over. , Maybe she believed the angels 
would bear her away on their wings, maybe that 
her Savior would not allow her to be crushed on 
the stones below, maybe it was only to be away 
from the treacherous earth, away from the strug- 
gling world. 

Those who found her, thought she was dead. 
When she came to herself, she asked how she 
came to be there. When they told her, she again 
realized it all, and in moanings unutterable, 
prayed for death. Then, as strength returned, 
the spirit of her divine inspirations renewed the 
faith within her. ' * I have done wrong, ' ' she cried 
in confession. ** Forgive me, God, and comfort 
me I" 

6. The Pity of a Woman Shaming the Reason 
of Mam, 

The wife of Jean of Luxembourg, having pity 
on her, interceded for Jeanne and the rabid Bish- 
op of Beauvais was sent away without his prey. 

Joan was profoundly concerned for what was 
happening to Compiegne. One of her attendants 
said that, when the news was brought to her that 
Compiegne was about to surrender from famine. 



BIGHT AND WRONG 205 

she cried out in great anguish, and in prophecy 
that came true, *'It shall not be, for all the places 
which the King of Heaven has restored to the 
gentle King Charles by my aid will never be taken 
by his enemies, if he be diligent to guard them. ' * 
In this she repeated her words, that were as a 
maxim of reproach to those "who do the work 
of God negligently," and they have become the 
words of modern philosophy, * ' God will work for 
men who work." 

Jeanne now gave herself up to prayer for Com- 
piegne, that her Lord save them from the slaugh- 
ter determined upon by the besiegers. Somehow a 
wonderful thing happened. The people in Com- 
piegne were perishing rapidly in the famine and 
must yield in a few days, when the Count of Ven- 
dome raised a small company, about one hundred 
and fifty lancers, to see if anything was possible 
to be done in such a hopeless condition. He 
marched down along the banks of the Oise pro- 
tected by the forests of Cuise. The famine- 
stricken people saw him and set up a great re- 
joicing. The camps around heard and wondered. 
News came in that Vendome was approaching 
with an army. The English and Burgundians 
drew themselves up in line of battle with their 
back to the gates of Compiegne. Plavy, the gov- 
ernor, saw a chance. Every man and woman in 
the town was given weapons. They poured 
through the gates in a torrent. "With the energy 
of despair they attacked a near-by fortification 



206 JOAN OF ABC 

manned by three hundred of the enemy. They 
carried it by storm and from the walls signaled 
their victory to the little bunch of lancers with 
Vendome. With shouts of victory they came on 
and cut their way through without the loss of a 
man. Night coming over them, the Burgundians 
broke camp, leaving their fortresses and towers 
with all their supplies. The English drew off in 
the opposite direction. The people of Compiegne 
swarmed over the deserted camps and in a few 
days the French soldiers were riding a wide cir- 
cuit of the country driving away every remaining 
force of the enemy. 

''The witch-maid of the Armagnacs has done 
it,*' passed in awestruck tones from lip to lip, 
and the wise men among them became sure that 
everything was being lost to them so long as the 
Maid lived. 

The Bishop of Beauvais was sent back with the 
blood-money that was required, and the demand 
on Jean of Luxembourg was renewed in the name 
of God and the Church. It was now effective. 
The Maid was at last sold by her captor. She 
was carried to Arras. It was on the way to 
Rouen, where to the hideous shame of all the 
world, her ashes were to meet the sordid earth, 
and from whence her martyrdom should cry out 
against man's inhumanity to man, until the last 
master of souls and the last beast of the will shall 
be driven from the earth. 



RIGHT AND WRONG 207 

7. Points of Interest Along the Way 

Anatole France in his history says of the Uni- 
versity of Paris, "These scholars of the Univer- 
sity were human ; they believed what it was their 
interest to believe ; they were priests and they be- 
held the devil everywhere, but especially in a 
woman. Without having devoted themselves to 
any profound examination of the deeds and say- 
ings of this damsel, they knew enough to cause 
them to demand an immediate inquiry. She called 
herself the emissary of God, the daughter of God. 
. . o She commanded armies, wherefore she was a 
slayer of her fellow creatures, and foolhardy. 
She was seditious for, are not all those seditious 
who support the opposite party?" 

Accordingly judgment of condemnation was al- 
ready entered and now their duty became the will 
to find an excuse to put that judgment into exe- 
cution. Such is always the reasoning of partisan- 
ship. It assumes the interest of self to be the 
highest possible interest, and, from that point of 
reasoning, interprets its will to be moral law. 

The University no sooner heard that La Pu- 
celle had been bought from her captors by the 
English, than they laid claim to the right to de- 
cide her fate. 

This great victory over her won by souls as 
tainted arid money as cursed as ever bought a 
Judas, was a happy chance for the proof of great 
learning. The body of learned men drew up a 



208 JOAN OF ARC 



letter of congratulation to Henry VI, the nine- 
year-old King of England and France, who was 
the grandchild of Isabeau, the French Queen who 
had ruined her country, and then betrayed it at 
Troyes. The learned body of scholars, after re- 
citing what had happened, said, ''We now again 
write on this matter, very dread and sovereign 
lord and father, always oifering our humble and 
loyal recommendations that there may be no neg- 
ligence in dealing with it, for the honor of our 
Savior Jesus Christ." 

Jeanne was taken like a dangerous criminal to 
the gloomy old castle of Crotoy. Here she re- 
ceived the last marks of mercy she was ever to 
know on earth, and was allowed a few evidences 
of kindness that she was never again to know in 
this world. 

There were some good ladies, matrons and 
maidens at Abbeville who petitioned to see her. 
They called her in their petition, *'a marvel of 
her sex, and a generous soul whom God had in- 
spired for the good of France." These good 
women had some powerful influence to help them, 
for they were allowed to visit Jeanne in prison. 
They came by boat five leagues down the Somme 
to do so. They said many beautiful things to La 
Pucelle, those women good and true of Abbeville. 
She kissed them all good-bye and asked them to 
pray for her. They went away weeping and all 
of them saying how wonderful was her resigna- 
tion to the will of God. 



RIGHT AND WRONG 209 

What Jeanne suffered at Crotoy deprived of all 
protection from brutal guards only heaven knows. 

We do not know the prophetic vision that may 
sometimes have been unveiled before the faith of 
Joan of Arc, but, wherever she was mistreated, 
there stands the greatest tributes to her truth. 
The fortress of Crotoy overlooked the cold, gray 
waters of the channel, and now, near the shore, 
there stands a statue in bronze of the Maid, in the 
dress worn in the fields of Domremy, looking out 
over the river. The inscription reads, ''To the 
daughter of the people, who, full of faith in the 
destinies of France, when all despaired, delivered 
our country. . . . Let us remember always. 
Frenchmen, that our country was bom from the 
heart of a woman, from her tenderness and her 
tears, from the blood she shed for us." 

One cold, sleety day in early December, she was 
taken in an open boat across the river and lodged 
in the castle of Eu. Then she was taken to Dieppe 
and a few days before Christmas was placed in 
the tower of the castle of Rouen. 



8. When Reason Justifies the Will 

Villaret says of the captured girl, "Never did 
the victories of Crecy, of Poitiers, or of Agincourt 
excite such transport: the feeling of the people 
was carried even to a frenzy of Joy." 

She was the flag of a cause, captured to be torn 



210 JOAN OF ARC 

and destroyed in proof of the might, and therefore 
of the right, for all the enemies of her people. 

Grafton's chronicles of those times represents 
the view of her enemies concerning her. There a 
detailed description is given of the capture of one 
"Jone of Puzeell, known as the Mayde of God," 
the account ending with her being sent ''to the 
duke of Bedford at Roan, where after a long ex- 
amen she was brent to ashes." 

After reciting the feats accredited to her by the 
French, the chronicler exclaims, **0 Lorde, what 
disprayse is this to the nobilitie of Fraunce : what 
blot is this to the Frenche nation : what more re- 
buke can be amputed to a renowned reign, than to 
afifirme, write and confesse that all notable vic- 
tories, and honorable conquests, which neyther the 
King with his power, nor the nobilitie with their 
valiantness, nor the counsayle with their witte, nor 
the commonaltie with their strength, could com- 
passe or obtaine, were gotten and achieved by a 
shepherdes daughter, a chamberlein in a hostrie, 
and a beggar's brat: which blinding the wittes of 
the Frenche nation, by revelations, dreams, and 
phantasticalle visions, did make them believe 
things not to be supposed, and to geve fayth to ad- 
ventures impossible.". 

The chronicler in rehearsing what followed as a 
result, says that, "for a true declaration of the 
f alsitie and lewdnesse of her doing, she was taken 
before the byshop and the universitie of Paris, and 
was there with solemnity adjudged and con- 



RIGHT AND WRONG 211 

dempned for being a superstitions sorceresse, and 
a devilislie blasphemeres of God, and as an er- 
ronyous wretch was consumed with f yre. ' ' 

After discussing the folly of many French writ- 
ers who believed the girl a saint sent from God, he 
offers his reasons conclusively proving, according 
to the reasoning of his time, why it could not be 
so. 

''For this I am sure," he emphatically affirms, 
"that all auncient wryters, as well divine as pro- 
phane, allege these three things besides divers 
others, to apperteine of necessitie to a good 
woman. First, shamefastnesse, which the Ro- 
maine ladies so kept, that seldom or never were 
they seene openly talking to a man; which great 
virtue at this day is holden amongst the Turkes 
highly esteemed. The second is pittie: which in 
a woman's hart abhorreth the spylling of the 
bloud of any poore beast, or siely birde. The 
thirde is womanly behavior, avoyding the occa- 
sion of evill judgment and the causes appertein- 
ing to slaunder." 

Then the chronicler called on all good men to 
witness, ''Where was her shamefastnesse!" For 
the second, "Where was her womanly pittie, when 
taking to her the hart of a cruelle beast, slue man, 
woman and childe, whenever she might have the 
upper hand." But worst of all, "Where was her 
womanly behaviour, when she cladde her selfe in 
a man's clothing, and was conversaunt with every 



212 JOAN OF ARC 

losell, geving occasion to all men to judge, and 
speake eville of her doings!'* 

From these logical conclusions, he decides that 
''all men must needes confesse, that the cause 
ceasing, the effect also ceaseth : so that these mo- 
ralle virtues being lacking, she was no good 
woman, then it must needes consequently follow, 
that she was no saint." 

''0 logic!" thus many a martyr might have 
cried with Madam Roland, ''how many crimes 
have been done in thy name." 

With such irrefutable reasoning has every inci- 
dent of man's inhumanity to man been made to 
satisfy the conscience of every one who depends 
upon thinking from premise to conclusion, in 
which self is the sole judge of the moral law for 
the rights of man. 

9. Some Glimpses Into the Darkness of the Times 

Out of the mass of reminiscences gathered from 
witnesses concerning this obscure period of her 
captivity, there are a few that give us some vision 
of the truth. 

That there was not lacking at the time a popu- 
lar judgment against Charles of Valois, may be 
believed from a letter sent the King, written by 
the Archbishop of Embrum. i 

"I beg you," he concludes in his letter, "for 
the recovery of this girl, and, for the ransom of 
her life, spare neither effort or gold, no matter 



RIGHT AND WRONG 213 

at what price, unless you would incur the indelible 
shame of a most disgraceful ingratitude." 

We also know that the town council at Tours or- 
dered public prayers for her deliverance, and a 
procession was formed in which the clergy walked 
bareheaded through the town. 

From far-off Dauphiny there is still preserved 
the prayer in which it was said, "Almighty and 
Everlasting Lord God, who of Thine own un- 
speakable mercy and marvelous goodness hast 
caused a virgin to arise for the uplifting and pres- 
ervation of France, and for the confusion of its 
enemies, and hast permitted her by their hands to 
be cast into prison, as she labored to obey Thy 
holy commandments, grant unto us, we beseech 
Thee, that she may be delivered from their power 
unhurt, and finally accomplish the work which 
Thou hast commanded her to do." 

Loyalty can never be utterly extinguished. The 
uncertain and unreasonable can never be accepted 
or maintained as certain and reasonable. Unal- 
terable faith means unconquerable soul. All the 
powerful friends of this faith-keeping woman de- 
serted her in the time of defeat even as the hum- 
ble followers deserted Christ. But, in the flaming 
heights of conspicuous contrast, it left for all who 
have eyes to see the almighty meaning of faith 
as the measure and ideal of unconquerable life. 



CHAPTER XII 

''THE TENDER MERCIES OF THE WICKED 
ARE CRUEL" 

1. The Way of the Cross 

The awful story of moral incompetency, when 
conscience is lodged in reason or in the collective 
will, can nowhere be clearer seen than in the en- 
deavor to bring this immortal girl to a logical, le- 
gal and justified death. The greatest system of 
reasoning then in the world served by the most 
learned doctors of arts and laws, was met by 
such an infallible simplicity of soul, that it should 
have put to shame their useless and worthless 
learning, but they could understand her only as a 
Satanic prodigy subverting their self -authorized 
mastery as the delegated agents of God. All the 
brutal will against opposition that had come up 
out of the struggle of man was brought together 
here in the most hideous monstrosity of reason- 
ing, done to one who deserved it least. 

Her capture was believed to be a final checkmate 
to her King and the triumph of an insurgent polit- 
ical section of the Catholic organization in 
Europe. She was therefore the gage of battle be- 
tween divisions of Europe that were military, po- 
litical, ecclesiastic and dynastic. 

214 



"MERCIES OF THE WICKED' 215 

Her first captors had some of tlie instincts of 
chivalrous warriors, for they were acquainted 
with her knightly character and her noble stand- 
ard of warfare, but, as she was transferred here 
and there, on down the line toward the dungeon 
of Rouen, she was farther and farther away from 
the enemies who respected her high ideal of honor, 
and was deeper and deeper among the perverted 
minds, that were blackened by the stories against 
her as a sorceress and a witch. 

On January 31, 1431, the English owners turned 
her over to the French Inquisition and the tender 
mercies of the University of Paris. Then in the 
dungeon of Rouen began the world-shaking proc- 
ess of the powers of evil and the might of Europe 
against this peasant girl now nineteen years of 
age, and yet, not less than five centuries older 
than the humanity of the world. 

In that dungeon was one of the bright lights of 
God, and around it with all the wrath of beasts 
was the shame and folly of human reason, assum- 
ing to be the guide of human faith! 

The desperately brutal treatment imposed on 
her by her five boorish guards, who had no re- 
spect for woman nor thought of God, was doubt- 
less to break her spirit and force some confession 
to be used against her. For two terrible months 
three of the five men were always with her in the 
heavy barred cage where she was ironed and fet- 
tered like a beast. 

There is record that the Duchess of Bedford 



216 JOAN OF ARC 

with some other women visited her cell and came 
away testifying that Jeanne was an honest girl 
deserving to be treated as such by her guards. A 
knowledge of the violence of these men being car- 
ried to the Earl of Warwick in England, he or- 
dered them to be taken away and others placed as 
guards, but these new guards were under the 
same head-keeper. 

It is recorded also that she was visited by a 
party consisting of Jean de Luxembourg, who had 
sold her to the English; his brother, the Bishop 
of Therouenne ; the Earls Stafford and Warwick, 
and also Haimond de Macy, who had tried hon- 
orably to obtain her affection and make her his 
wife. An offer was made to ransom her if she 
would no more take up arms for France. But 
Haimond de Macy in writing of it says that she 
scorned the offer as mockery. Then, standing up 
in her chains, she addressed herself to Stafford 
and Warwick, ''I know well that these English 
will do me to death, thinking when I am dead to 
gain the Kingdom of France ; but if they were a 
hundred thousand Godons more than they are 
now, they shall never have France." 

It is said that Stafford in a rage drew his dag- 
ger, but she looked him down as was told of her 
in the wonder-stories of her childhood, when she 
faced a wolf in the forests of Chesnu. Warwick 
prevailed on Stafford to sheathe his dagger. As a 
noble Earl wanted to stab her to death though 



"MERCIES OF THE WICKED' 217 

she was in chains, what might be the evil deeds of 
her brutish guard ! 

Chivalry and faith, once so exalting to men, 
had departed from knighthood, and the greatest 
of them wanted to burn one of the bravest and 
truest warriors that ever lived, though that one 
was a woman and among the sweetest Christians 
that had lived since Christ. 

3. An Allegiance That Could Not Be Limited hy 
Any Pledge to Men 

It was claimed that she could have been released 
from her chains and iron cage at any time, if she 
would have given her word of faith that she would 
not try to escape, but her worst enemies used 
this matchless evidence of courage and character 
as proof of depravity. She had said before she 
was dragged from her horse, at her capture, that 
she had given her faith to God and would not 
therefore render it unto any man. As one called 
of God in the service of God, she could not pledge 
her conduct for any exchange of comfort or con- 
venience. She would not be false to her word nor 
to her Lord, the King of Heaven. 

A peasant girl coming so insistent and timely 
from her flocks in the fields of Domremy, who 
could confound the most learned men in Europe 
with her answers to their questions, who could 
lead the armies of France to victories that re- 
deemed her nation in seven years from a hundred 



218 JOAN OF ARC 

years' war, who never failed to turn the points 
of the most astute and ruthless inquisitors in the 
world, is not to be explained by calling her the 
tool of politicians, and the superstitious idea of 
demoniac possession has long since been aban- 
doned. Her life was an unceasing struggle against 
antagonism and her wonderful deeds were always 
not only against overwhelming opposition but de- 
spite intrigue, envy, treachery, blocked ways, and 
the least support that could be given by her su- 
periors in authority. ^ 

Of the visions and voices of Joan of Arc, Grace 
James, in a splendid discussion, says, "There is 
in the idea something whimsical, yet fearful and 
hair-lifting, something grotesque, yet appealing, 
humorous, yet weird. It seems in the same in- 
stant to put the whole thing on the level of a fairy- 
tale, and to inspire it with the most convincing 
realism. It is instinct with the blending of fa- 
miliarity with awe, of intimacy with worship, 
which is the characteristic feature of Medieval 
Christianity, and which remains even now the 
characteristic feature of a child's religion. It 
awakens in the mind associations tender, roman- 
tic, mysterious, echoes of all the fresh, sharp won- 
der of childhood, the high faith and zest of life 
that passes away so soon." 

The sublime deeds of valor were hers no more. 
She could go forth, this daughter of God, under 
the free, wild heavens no more except on the way 
to the martyr's stake, but for the inspiration in 



"MERCIES OF THE WICKED' 219 

faith of those to come, she was glorified in the soul 
of man, immortal with her martyr's crown. 

3. The Guilty Givmg Justice to the Irmocent 

In order to appreciate the faith of this girl, it 
should be remembered that the martyrdom of men 
rarely lasted more than a few hours or days, while 
hers was at its worst for more than six months. 

This young girl in all those terrible months 
never saw the face of a woman, only the beastly 
leer of depraved nien and monstrous priests. 

Joan, weak and wracked with the unspeakable 
torture of months, was dragged chained into the 
great hall where a hundred learned doctors of the 
law, surrounded by armed men, vied with one an- 
other in shouting their hate at her. Alone, with 
none but her faith in God, she bore their assaults 
even as she had endured her beastly keepers. And 
in the midst of the wild shouts around her from 
that bedlam of vindictive minds, who can doubt 
that she felt nearer than such hate, the heavenly 
host of supporting souls, as when she fought by 
the side of Anion at Saint Pierre, and won the 
victory in the name of her Lord, the King of 
Heaven. 

In her time, no one presumed to doubt that she 
had the gift of superhuman powers. There was 
then no faith in the power of faith that is right 
over the will that is might. The only question was 
whether it was of God or Satan. The French 



220 JOAN OF ARC 

people who were helped by her work believed 
faithfully that her powers were of God in proof 
of which she used those powers only for good; 
the English, Burgundians and traitorous French, 
whose fortunes were lessened by her work, be- 
lieved her powers were of Satan in proof for 
which she used those powers only for evil. 

Numerous historical prophecies which she 
made, that were indisputably recorded at the time, 
all came true, and she never in any of the long 
intensely artful questions of her enemies contra- 
dicted herself in points of her faith, nor said any- 
thing proven to be false, according to her inter- 
pretation of divine guidance in events. If there 
had been a possible contradiction in her spirit of 
truth, the learned inquisitors would have found 
it and made the most of it. 

The Catholic Encyclopedia says, "Throughout 
the trial Cauchon's assessors consisted almost en- 
tirely of Frenchmen, for the most part theologi- 
ans and doctors of the University of Paris." 

At her public trial there were always 'fifty or 
sixty judges present, and hundreds of the most 
skillful and learned men in Europe. They cross- 
examined her with all the skill of trained lawyers, 
endeavoring to break her down or wear her out, 
putting her through every detail they could gather 
from hundreds of witnesses regarding every in- 
cident of her life. 

For six days the trial was carried on publicly 
and then suddenly it went into the darkness of 



'MERCIES OF THE WICKED' 221 



privacy, with two witnesses to record the pro- 
ceedings and two judges to hear the trial. Noth- 
ing but the most beautiful Christian womanhood 
had been found, so perfect that all the merciless 
arts of her learned judges could not find a fault. 
But the death of the innocent had been decreed 
and it must not fail. 

4. Humanity "Never Entirely Bead 

Lord Roland Gower, in his study of Joan of 
Arc, says, ''Her presence of mind and the cour- 
age she maintained day after day was supreme, 
in the face of that crowd of enemies who left no 
stone unturned, no subtlety of law or superstition 
unused, to bring a charge of guilt against her. No 
victory of arms that Joan of Arc might have ac- 
complished had her career continued one bright 
and unclouded success, could have shown in a 
grander way the greatness of her character than 
her answers and her bearing during the entire 
course of her examinations before her implacable 
enemies, her judicial murderers." 

Though she was under the English government 
and a prisoner to English masters, her trial was 
conducted almost exclusively by renegade French- 
men, who were chiefly ecclesiastics and doctors of 
theology from the University of Paris. It was 
seen at the beginning of the sixth day that a re- 
action was taking place in the minds of the preju- 
diced and misinformed public. One of the three 



222 JOAN OF ARC 

witnesses of the public trial, who seems to have 
written down the evidence with the greatest care, 
reported in his notes that there were frequent in- 
terruptions, at last becoming so noisy that the 
witnesses could not hear the testimony. 

The malicious trap was often detected by the 
audience when Joan gave back some of her brave 
refuting replies. Then there were voices in the 
great hall, which called out, "Well spoken, Joan, 
that was well said 1*' But no one thought to ques- 
tion the righteousness or authority of the system. 

An English knight declared openly that he 
greatly regretted "such a courageous maid had 
not been born an English woman. She would not 
then lack for defenders.** 

She had no one to advise her in anything 
against that appalling mass of enemies hunting 
her down like an animal beset by .wolves. There 
was no one to give a word of encouragement, hope 
or support except the sublime faith that gave her 
such sublime character. 

One of the members of the hideous Inquisition 
was Isambard de la Pierre, and he tried to show 
La Pucelle a little pity. He sat near her when- 
ever he could and by nudging her or touching her 
arm, showed her his opinion of what she should 
or should not do for her own sake. 

But her master-inquisitor Cauohon, with the 
vigilance of an evil eye, saw him and reported 
it to Warwick. That noble Earl hastened over 
to the offender and in the most abusive terms in- 



'MERCIES OF THE WICKED'' 223 

formed him that he would be tied in a sack and 
dropped in the Seine if he dared befriend the girl 
again. 

5. Religion in the Minds of Hate 

Day by day she was unfastened from the beam 
in her cage to which she was chained and was 
taken to her torture chair in the judicial inquisi- 
tion. Every time she passed the door of the prison 
chapel she plead to be allowed a moment of wor- 
ship as she had been accustomed all her life, and 
which was allowed to every criminal that had 
ever been there, but in sacrilegious cruelty she 
was never allowed any chance for consolation 
from the service of her religion. One day as they 
passed she asked one of the Sheriffs if she might 
kneel in the chapel door. He was humane enough 
to allow her, but when Cauchon heard of this, 
word soon came to the Sheriff that another such 
act of kindness to the prisoner and he would spend 
his days in '*a prison where no light of the sun 
or moon should appear." 

John Lohier, one of the Commissioners who was 
a learned lawyer of considerable renown, was con- 
sulted on some point by Cauchon, and in the con- 
versation he declared to the prosecuting bishop 
that the entire trial was illegal, null and void, not 
only because it was secret, but because the ac- 
cused was without benefit of counsel. Cauchon, 
greatly fearing the influence of such a man, hur- 
ried to "Warwick to have the lawyer silenced. Lo- 



224 JOAN OF ARC 

hier immediately resigned as a Commissioner. He 
freely expressed himself in the opinion that the 
great council of doctors at law were driving a 
young ignorant girl to the martyr *s stake on noth- 
ing more important than a grammatical distinc- 
tion. He explained that the grammatical defini- 
tion on which they were condemning her was be- 
tween the words "believe'' and "appear." He 
very boldly pointed out the merciless advantage 
they were taking of the innocent peasant girl in 
these recorded words, "If, instead of affirming 
that she believes her visions to be real, she would 
have said, as equally true, that they appeared so 
to her, she could never be condemned." 

Considering the fierce distinctions forced upon, 
her in the subsequent course of the trial and the 
fidelity with which she held to her belief, it is not 
at all certain that any counsel given her would 
have caused her to say "appeared" when she 
meant "believed." 

The success of their will for her condemnation 
could not allow any man's reason to interfere. 
Lohier was arrested on some pretext and impris- 
oned. He escaped and saved his life by leaving 
France. He arrived at Eome and was at once 
taken into the service of the Pope. This is strong 
evidence that the Pope had no friendship for the 
French-Burgundian-English condition of the 
Church. Doubtless the report on that faction 
which he gave the Pope was so reasonable that 
it had much to do with giving justice at last to the 



"MERCIES OF THE WICKED' 225 

sublime character of La Pucelle. It was partisan- 
ship in the canse of will that fulfilled its wolfish 
nature upon her, and their evil can not be charged 
against any religious meaning in the name of faith 
whose fulfillment is the hope of a social world. 
Intelligence is the light of faith as faith is the in- 
telligence that trusts the system of a normal uni- 
verse. 

6. The Dark Silence That Fell Over France 

Joan of Arc, shorn of all external power, was 
now helpless in the hands of political and relig- 
ious fanatics, and, divested of all human rights, 
was now their property according to international 
custom and claims, subject absolutely to the judg- 
ment and will of church and state. 

At her capture a great silence fell upon France 
concerning her whose name had been the highest 
among names all over the world. Somehow the 
exalted belief in her must have been struck dumb 
by this unbelievable capture. She could save oth- 
ers but herself she could not save. Just such a si- 
lence fell all over the valleys of Jordan and the 
plains around Jerusalem when Jesus of Nazareth 
fell into the power of the Eoman law. One of 
his best-beloved disciples denied him thrice at the 
mere mention by a servant that he knew the man 
who had lost his power to the soldiers of Eome. 
The saintly maid, hailed as the Savior of France, 
this Daughter of God, had failed and therefore 



226 JOAN OF ARC 

miglit be merely a witcli. Verily, she hatli an evil 
spirit! It was the usual sin against the Holy 
Ghost of Faith, which hath no forgiveness. Hu- 
man conscience had then no inner witness to any 
truth. 

Besides, the Church, incapable of injustice, was 
supposed to be doing well by her. A Council of 
one hundred or more of the most learned men in 
Europe were patiently sifting out every atom of 
evidence in order to give her justice. There is 
here a possibility of explaining the King and such 
commanding generals as Dunois, Alengon, and La 
Hire. They may not have known that she was 
suffering such hideous torture, chained from 
throat to feet to a pillar in an iron cage with 
drunken troopers. They may have thought that 
she was being cared for by the Church and given 
such a trial by the most learned conclave in all 
history, as to vindicate her and establish the right- 
eousness of France. But this is almost too much 
to believe, as they must have known the tender 
mercies of the cruel, and that the lamb of faith 
was captive to the wolves of will. But let it be un- 
derstood that these were afterward, with the ut- 
most thoroughness, by the highest authority, to- 
tally repudiated as being the church. They were 
an ecclesiastical party, sold to a political party 
having no divine grace to sanctify their claim. But 
it may well be believed that the world stood in 
awe of them as the apostolic representatives of 



"MERCIES OF THE WICKED" 227 

God, while this Domremy girl had nothing to 
prove her claims but deeds of valor. 

Strong men often break down, body and mind, 
nnder the cross-examination of attorneys in a few 
days, but here was a girl through a year's hard 
soldiering, and months of enervating imprison- 
ment, who endures and replies to the incessant 
wits of malignant wills day after day for months, 
at last to be harried and badgered unbroken to 
the martyr's stake. The faith that carried her 
to the King and Orleans was indeed surpassing 
wonderful, and the faith that won great battles is 
yet far more wonderful, but beyond all wonder is 
the faith-power, unsurpassable in history, with 
which she endured the martyrdom of months end- 
ing in the red death at the stake. 

7. The Egocentric Reasoning of Partisans 

The freak of partisan reasoning and the futility 
of the party mind are well illustrated in the severe 
grill they put Joan of Arc through concerning 
Franquet d 'Arras, who had been executed at 
Lagny. He was a Burgundian raider, the leader 
of a band of freebooters, who had lain in wait 
for her when she was on her way from Melun to 
Lagny, and through her incalculable strategy had 
been captured. She had allowed him to be tried 
for his crimes and executed. This had been done 
on the demands of the officers of her party. They 
claimed that she had no right to interfere with 



228 JOAN OF ARC 

the usual death-penalty given to one who did not 
govern his deeds, according to the rules of hon- 
orable war. But to her inquisitors such a breech 
of their claims to the rights of military law was 
a crime to be held against her. He should have 
been kept for ransom or to be exchanged. But 
here was this woman warrior guiltless of that 
man 's evil deeds, whom they were hounding to her 
death, regardless of the honor of priest, man or 
war. 

Several of her most devoted followers had been 
roving freebooters, hardly less considerate of mili- 
tary honor than Franquet d 'Arras, but, among 
the wonders of her influence, they had become 
chivalrous and knightly in the ennobling service 
of La Pucelle. Among these reformed warriors, 
perhaps the most widely known was La Hire. He 
loyally believed in the strategy of the warrior 
woman, and, being a master of military tactics 
himself, his testimony stands well for the military 
genius of the wonderful woman. Yet, sometimes, 
when she undertook to accomplish the impossible, 
as it appeared to him, he swore by his Martin- 
baton, but a word from her made the impossible 
look easy, and it was done. As an instance, when 
La Hire followed her reluctantly at the assault on 
Jargeau, she cried out to him, ''Fear not. God's 
time is the right time. When He wills it, you 
must open the attack. Go forward, he will pre- 
pare the way." And they took that strongly for- 
tified town with the loss of only twenty men. 



''MERCIES OF THE WICKED" 229 

La Hire had been famous throughout Franco 
and Bungundy for his brutal rapacity and no less 
savage wit, but he was the only one who could 
meet with equal ferocity the hideous atrocities 
of the Burgundian freebooters. However, in the 
midst of the desolation and misery, this bold cav- 
alryman and raider had always been known as a 
typical jolly brigand of the Armagnacs. He it was 
who, at the beginning of every pillaging expedition 
against the Burgundians, prayed ''Good Lord, I 
pray Thee, deal with La Hire as he would deal 
with Thee were he God and wert Thou La Hire.'* 
He was desperately impious, but after meeting 
Joan, he never swore except by his staff. 

8. Incidents from One of the Few Great Trials 

La Pucelle, just past nineteen, weak and weary 
from nine months of harrowing treatment, enough 
to break body and mind, was brought out to face 
the most learned body of men in the world, sur- 
rounded by those who declared her to be the wick- 
edest and vilest of all creatures. Their unceasing 
endeavor was to betray her into some pitfall in 
her religion upon which they could condemn her to 
death. It was her faith she was defending in the 
name of her soul's responsibility to God, and this 
was the sincerity of her mission and her life. ' 

When one of her inquisitors became worn out 
in the strain of trying to entrap her, another 
would take his place. They had her mind on the 



230 JOAN OF ARC 

torture rack, and in striving to break it were 
themselves broken. 

Once she turned suddenly to Cauchon, so that 
he recoiled from her words, ''You say that you are 
my judge. Have a care what you do ! I am sent 
from God and you put yourself in great peril.** 

Fearful, after the Lawyer Lohier had reached 
Eome, lest there would be cause to declare her 
trial illegal, Bishop Cauchon offered her a chance, 
when the trial was almost ended, to call some one 
to her assistance as counsellor, but she told him 
that she had no need of human counsel as all her 
trust was in the Lord. Then, after some reflec- 
tion, she said, ''First, as to what you admonish 
me for my good, I thank you and all the com- 
pany. As to the counsel you offer me, I thank you 
too, but I have no intention of departing from the 
counsel of God.'* Cauchon told her that she could 
go to mass, if she would put on women's clothing, 
but she replied that her clothing was the symbol 
of her mission. She had been told to put this 
clothing on by her Lord and had not yet been told 
to return to woman's apparel. 

No one can appreciate the unspeakable torture 
of soul to which she was subjected without con- 
sidering her life-long belief in the power of the 
Church. All else failed her inquisitors down to 
the last test, which was, would she submit her mis- 
sion to the judgment of the Church ! But she knew 
that the Church in this case was a fragment rep- 
resented by Count Cauchon. She begged to have 



''MERCIES OF THE WICKED' 231 

her case taken before the Pope. But the fragment 
would not lose its victim by having its cause trans- 
ferred to the head. The choice between the soul 
in its immediate relation with God, and whether 
that relation must be through the priest in the 
name of the Church, was here at its test, clear and 
unmistakable as anywhere in all the long, terrible, 
historic struggle for freedom of conscience and 
liberty of the soul. 

Cauchon warned her that unless she submitted 
she would be abandoned by the Church, thus los- 
ing her soul through temporal fire into eternal 
damnation. 

But he could not thus crush her. "You can not 
do to me as you say," she declared, "without evil 
befalling you both body and soul.*' 

The dreadful torture of soul and body before 
the judges and in her lonely dungeon at the hands 
of beastly-minded keepers, at last threw her into 
a fever in which she expected to die, but the tor- 
ture went on as if it were a better opportunity 
to break her faith and mind. 

"Considering how sick I am," she said to Cau- 
chon, "it seems to me that I am in great peril of 
death. If so be that God wills to do his pleas- 
ure on me, I beg of you to let me be confessed, 
and receive my Savior, and be buried in conse- 
crated ground." 

Cauchon told her, with fiendish piety, it could 
not be so unless she submitted to the Church. 

"If my body dies in prison," she said, "I de- 



232 JOAN OF ARC 

pend upon your placing it in consecrated ground ; 
if you do not so, I leave it all with my Lord.'* 

Thus spoke the daughter of God against all hu- 
man will to control faith or to deny its right be- 
tween the soul and its Maker. Her life was in 
tune with the Infinite and her soul way stayed on 
God. 



9. Powers That Kill the Body and Destroy the 

Soul 

La Pucelle was taken in her weak and worn 
condition of fever and distress to the chamber of 
horrors for torture. The wretch who was to tor- 
ture her gave his testimony that her answers to 
the questions of the assessors so amazed them 
that they were afraid to place her on the rack. 
Their statement of the reasons why they brought 
her back without torture bear out the impression 
that they were afraid she would die without con- 
fession and thus escape them. 

As to schemes and treachery the most infamous 
act was that of Loiseleur, a priest who was put 
into her cell as a prisoner. He told her he was 
from near her old home and that he was impris- 
oned because of his love for the French King. 
She believed in him enough to enter into confes- 
sion to him. Warwick and Cauchon hid them- 
selves where they could hear the confession, but 
the Maid had nothing to confess more than the 
faith of the pure and the true. The sacrilegious 



''MERCIES OF THE WICKED'' 233 

treachery gained tliem notMng, excepting that, by 
Loiseleur's advice, she answered questions that 
she would otherwise have avoided. 

In all the history of the world, there has never 
been such' a systematic and scholarly attempt to 
make history and therewith to blacken the char- 
acter of an innocent person, and never was there 
a more ignominious failure to foist such black 
falsehood upon the world. Not the Maid of Or- 
leans but her calumniators are anathema among 
the truth-loving people of the earth. Her faith 
and character survive as immortal truth. So it 
was as the poet said: 

"Truth crushed to earth shall rise again. 
The eternal years of God are hers." 

When the long list of horrifying falsehoods was 
read to her at the end of the trial as the decision 
of her judges, she said in sublime simplicity, * * As 
to my acts, I submit them to the Church in Heav- 
en, to God, to the Holy Virgin, and to the Saints 
in Paradise. I have not failed in the Christian 
religion, nor will I ever do so." 

And praise to the Creator of heaven and earth, 
she proved from the fields of Domremy all the way 
to her ashes in Rouen for every distressed soul 
and to every one fighting wrong, that there can 
be such faith and such character, against which 
all the powers of hell can not prevail. * 

As one hideous crime after another was pro- 



234 JOAN OF ARC 

claimed against her, in that death's court, and the 
loud demand made of guilty or not guilty, she said 
that she had replied to all the charges, and now, 
''I refer myself to my Savior." 

When one of her statements was read to her, 
which was worded thus, ''All that I have done 
has been done by the advice of my Savior," she 
stopped the clerk and corrected him, saying that 
he had left out the word ''well" after the words 
"have done." So exact were all her answers. 
But the infamous executioners were determined 
on her death for no other reason, and for no other 
crime, than that she faithfully obeyed a loyal con- 
science as the voice of God, and served her great 
pity for France in the name of a righteous hu- 
manity. 

Bourguignon, long ago in his poems, calls her 
"The most beautiful flower of Christianity." Si- 
meon Luce describes her as the personification of 
France at its best, and he says, ' ' There never was 
a heart more strong or pure and from it the love 
of country was vibrating eternally in her soul." 
Truly it may be believed that she was also one 
of the world's greatest patriots. 



CHAPTER XIII 
GLIMPSES OF THE INQUISITION 

1. The Will of the Cat and the Song of the Bird 

The supreme idea of the prisoner's faith is re- 
vealed in a conclusive answer she gave to her in- 
quisitors in the last days of the trial as to what 
the angels first taught her. 

She said, that, ''Above all things I was to be a 
good girl, that God would help me, and that I 
must go to the aid of the Dauphin of France, 
for God showed me the great pity there was for 
the Kingdom of France." 

What human inquisitor would not break down 
there and cry out that she was guiltless of any 
urge to crime. Only the partisan could thus have 
steeled his heart against the divine love she had 
to help bring peace to the people of her distressed 
and ruined country. The truth is that under their 
partisan mail of iron they could not feel the di- 
vine touch. Mercy is not an attribute of will. It 
belongs only to faith. 

The maidenly innocence of this precious girl, 
that should have struck dumb her ruthless tor- 
mentors, flashes in a glimpse to us as they talked 
to her about whether she would be burned at the 

235 



236 JOAN OF ARC 

stake in her warrior clotliing, and wliy it was that 
she wanted a woman's dress. Her answer was 
that she would be satisfied "if her dress was only- 
long." Had not her soul been burnt with the 
leering, staring eyes of the drunken brutes who 
had been her keepers through the terrible months ! 
Why did not this group of pious men ranged 
round her feel their wills totter on the wicked 
foundations before the childhood innocence in 
this simple, patient, enduring faith of the Daugh- 
ter of God? It was because their souls had been 
sold to a partisan cause. They could neither feel 
nor reason from anything born of faith, hope or 
love. Their patriotism and their religion were 
limited to the bounds of their will and to the area 
of their personal interests. 

Once upon a time some men learned in the law 
sought to ensnare the Son of God, concerning the 
doctrine of John the Baptist. And they greatly 
feared, for they could not say it was of heaven 
because he would ask why they had not believed, 
and they could not say of men because they feared 
the friends of John. 

So these Pharisees of the Church, near the close 
of the trial, these partisans of a special cause, 
these fragments of broken reason, thought to en- 
trap her, with a question of history whose event 
happened before her time. 

They said, speaking of an act in the reign of the 
previous King, ' * Did your King do well to kill the 
Duke of Burgundy?" She answered, "It was a 



GLIMPSES OF INQUISITION 237 

great misfortune to France, but however it might 
be, God sent me to aid the King to his throne. ' ' 

**Does God hate the English?" was one of their 
futile searches for a morsel of heresy. As to what 
God felt toward the English, she said that she 
knew nothing, but this she knew, God wanted them 
driven out of France and that He would do it 
soon. 

During the trial her learned questioners came 
to the witch stories that prevailed in her native 
village of Domremy. It seemed to take her back 
to the scenes of her childhood so vividly that she 
forgot her fear of the cruel masters listening eag- 
erly for any word they might twist against her. 

Bishop Baupere suddenly asked as he saw the 
weary girl sink into memories, ''Jeanne, would 
you like to have a woman's dress again?" 

In the kindly spoken words she was a little girl 
again. 

"Give me one," she cried appealingly, *'I will 
put it on and go home to my mother. ' ' 

Then she saw only the wolfish stare from the 
brutal faces about her and she quickly added, 
"But I could not put it on here. I am content 
with this, since God is pleased that I wear it." 

2. The Unprotected Prey of the Wolf-Pack 

The two witnessing clerks, in their report of the 
secret trial, show that every device of sharp in- 
genuity was used on her to get from her the secret 



238 JOAN OF ARC 

sign by which it was said that King Charles came 
to have confidence in her as one sent from God. 
All trickery of questioning being unavailing, Dela- 
fontaine asked her the question direct, ''What is 
the sign that came to your King to make him be- 
lieve you were sent on the part of God?" 

''It is beautiful and honorable and much to be 
believed," was the enigmatical answer, "and it 
is good, and the richest that can be." 

Nicolas Loiseleur, the perfidious priest, who 
had been sent to hear confession from her, so as 
to advise her into a trap laid to ensnare her, suc- 
ceeded far enough, to get a thread of evidence 
which they could weave into their monstrous per- 
versions for conviction. She saw the thread she 
had been betrayed into giving, and which they 
were now winding about her, and she struggled 
with piteous endeavor to say nothing but the truth 
and yet not uncover the sign she had promised her 
saints not to disclose. 

The Dominican Isambard, in his sworn testi- 
mony, said, "The questions put to her were too 
difficult, subtle and captious ; so much so that the 
high ecclesiastical and well-lettered men, who 
were present, would with great difficulty them- 
selves have known how to answer them." 

Yet Jeanne quickly answered every one with a 
directness, simplicity and wisdom that took speech 
out of the mouths of her inquisitors and left them 
dumb on that subject. 

The University of Paris, in writing their de- 



GLIMPSES OF INQUISITION 239 

fense to the King and the Pope, said, **The Chris- 
tian fold in almost the whole West is infected with 
the poison of the Maid." 

What a joke that is on egomaniac learning, what 
a travesty on reason, what a sarcasm on author- 
ity, and what a high tribute to the people who 
loved this daughter of God! 

She strove to defeat her cruel questioners by 
trying to throw them off the track. But like a 
pack of wolves, they came back. They were shrewd 
enough to discover her attempts and in turn they 
endeavored to throw her into verbal contradic- 
tions made by her evasions and allegorical state- 
ments. 

**Does the sign still continue!" asked the 
Bishop. 

''It is good to know that it does," she replied. 
*'It will last a thousand years or more; and it is 
in the King^s treasury." 

A study of her desperate attempt to protect 
this one sacred secret shows that the ''King's 
treasury" mentioned by her was figurative, mean- 
ing the treasury of the King of Heaven, but in 
this material thing the hair-splitting questioners 
located the existence of idolatry. 

"Is it gold, silver, precious stones or a crown?" 
Delafontaine asked. 

' ' I shall tell you no more about it, ' ' she replied 
as if fearful of what he meant to fasten on her. 
' ' No man could know how to imagine anything so 
rich. ' ' 



240 JOAN OF ARC 

This was the imagery of a child, the wonder- 
child of spiritual faith. 

''What reverence did you make to the sign?" 
was the next question intended to incriminate her 
in idolatry. 

*'I knelt and uncovered my head,'* she rever- 
ently and innocently answered, ''and I thanked 
Our Lord because he had delivered me from the 
obstacles of the churchmen arguing to the King 
against me." 

3. The Sign and the Alhgory 

On Monday, March 12, two doctors of canon- 
law were made transcribing witnesses to take 
down her words. These two men, with probably 
a dozen others, the Bishop and Delaf ontaine, went 
to continue the questioning of her in the prison. 

She expressed herself faithful in the belief that 
her Lord had never failed her. 

"Did He not fail you as to good fortune when 
you were captured?" he asked. 

"Not so," she replied, "since it pleased Our 
Lord, that it was better that I should be taken." 

"Has He not failed you in gifts of grace?" 

"How so!" she answered fervently, "when He 
comforts me every day." 

Then they tried to entangle her as to disobey- 
ing the commandment to honor father and mother. 

"Was it well to set forth without leave of your 



GLIMPSES OF INQUISITION 241 

father and mother? Is it thus father and mother 
should be honored?'* 

''They have forgiven me," she humbly replied. 

*'Did you know not you were sinning when you 
left them?" 

''Since God commanded, it was right to do it," 
she replied spiritedly. "Because God command- 
ed, if I had had a hundred fathers and a hundred 
mothers, and if I had been the daughter of kings, 
I must have gone." 

The next day was spent trying again to force 
from her the secret of her sign. All else had failed 
so that even resourceful and pitiless enemies 
could not fasten anything upon her. Like Pontius 
Pilate they heard the evidence and even their bru- 
tal tongues could not say the word guilty. But 
the sign! What was it? Here was something 
that looked like idolatry and therefore heresy. 
Throughout all that hideous darkness of her in- 
quisition, her words were written down by those 
seeking to destroy her, and were never seen or re- 
vised by her. We get a glimpse of that fatal day 
in one of the written sentences wherein she pite- 
ously complains of being condemned by her judges 
to perjure herself in her promise to the saints 
that she would not tell the sign. What torture she 
had to undergo no one can know, but, to mislead 
her inquisitors, she told a long allegory in which 
the meaning of the story of the sign was supposed 
to be somewhere <3oncealed, but none can know 
what it was. The storv she told to satisfy them 



242 JOAN OF ARC 

reads like a child telling a fairy tale woven out 
of some semblance of experience. And yet, it 
bears the marks of her torture trying to be true 
to herself and to her saints not to tell untruth, 
even as she endeavored to satisfy her merciless 
inquisitors. 

Out of her allegory of the sign, the facts were 
taken by her inquisitors that an angel had brought 
the King a crown of fine gold so rich that no one 
could count its richness, and signified to him that 
he should recover his kingdom of France. 

We may believe that story, as told by her, to be 
actual happenings which she was describing as 
truth, and thus was really perjuring herself to 
her saints, as the judges decided, or we can be- 
lieve that the angel and the crown were symbolical 
in her story, and that they never got the **sign," 
and so she never perjured herself. 

When the angels left her, she says, **I was 
neither glad nor afraid; but I was very sorrow- 
ful, and I wish they had taken away my soul with 
them." 



4. The Warning 

She was asked if it was by any merit of hers 
that God sent the angel with the sign, the in- 
quisitors thus pretending to take the story as lit- 
erally true. 

* * No, ' ' she replied. * * He came for a great cause 
and that they would leave off arguing against 



GLIMPSES OF INQUISITION 243 

me, and let me give succor to the good people of 
Orleans." 

''Why was the angel sent to you rather than to 
another?" 

''Because," she replied, "it pleased God, by a 
simple maid, to drive away the adversaries of the 
King." 

She had very frequently warned her tireless 
tormentors that they ran great risks in perverting 
her meaning and twisting her words to the injury 
of her Lord's truth. In this instance she warned 
them again. It must have smote through their 
thick consciousness to some nerve of conscience, 
for they asked her about it. 

The Bishop of Beauvais being her most relent- 
less and merciless persecutor, must have asked 
Delaf ontaine to get from her, during the Bishop 's 
absence, what she meant by her warnings. 

"He says he is my judge," she replied. "I do 
not know that he is. If he judge ill, and God 
chastise him, I may have done my duty in warning 
him." 

"What is this peril or danger that he risks?" 

"My Voices tell me most frequently that I shall 
be delivered with a great victory, and they say to 
me, 'Fear not thyself for thy martyrdom: thou 
shalt come at last to the kingdom of Paradise.' 
And this they tell me simply and absolutely with- 
out failing me ever." 

So her warning did come true in a great victory 



2U JOAN OF ARC 

for her and as great a shame for her evil-minded 
foes. 

*'Thy martyrdom, Jeanne!'* exclaimed the in- 
,qmsitor, surprised that she could foresee some- 
thing dire for her that must have been very clear 
to him. 

*'The trouble and adversity I suffer in prison, 
that is martyrdom. Whether I shall suffer yet 
greater sorrow, I know not, but I trust God." 

Then Nicole Midy scored one of the diabolical 
points that constituted article nine in the twelve 
charges of heresy that condemned her to the stake. 
I ' ' Since your voices have told you that you shall 
come at last to the kingdom of Paradise," he 
asked with the pious art of one who sees the place 
for a death-stroke, '*do you hold yourself assured 
that you shall be saved, and that you shall not be 
damned in hell?" 

i Perhaps she did not know it was heresy to be 
sure of the love of God. Perhaps if she had 
known, her answer would have been the same. In 
fact, subsequent events proved that she was one 
of the great martyrs to the freedom of conscience 
and for the faith immediate between the soul and 
God. 

"I believe firmly what my voices have told me," 
she replied, ''that I shall be saved, as surely as if 
I were in heaven already." 

Indeed how could she do otherwise. If she had 
not believed her voices in all things how would 
it have been possible for her to believe enough 



GLIMPSES OF INQUISITION 245 

to have persevered through such a long series of 
seemingly impossible things. 

''That reply is of great weight, Jeanne," said 
the vice-inquisitor. 

''I hold it for a great treasure," was her re- 
sponse. 

Between these two replies exists all the differ- 
ence there is between the organized will to be- 
lieve and the spontaneous faith of hope and love. 
I * ' Then you do not believe that you can fall into 
mortal sin after that revelation 1 ' * 
I "Of that I can not know," she replied simply, 
''but I trust all in God." 

And for that they burnt her, those ancestors of 
reason, religion and law, and we may pause to 
wonder if our posterity may not see us as far 
removed from them as we believe ourselves to be 
from the University of Paris in 1431. 
/' Intelligence has not yet learned the values of 
faith over the spoils of will, and it has not yet 
distinguished between the progress of social mu- 
tuality over the business reciprocity of individual 
conquest. But this we know that faith-keeping 
is the divine religion of a redeemed humanity, and 
that the time is at hand for a faith-breaking world 
to give way to a faith-keeping universe. \ 

I 
5. The Source of Antagonism to Party Creeds 

The whole animus of the trial comes now into 
view. The crux of the inquisition is to be seen in 



246 JOAN OF ARC 

the jealousy of the religious organization of that 
time against all immediate personal communion 
and counsel from God. Such heresy disposed of 
the authority or mediation of the church! To 
have that office of the Church nullified by the im- 
mediate communion of souls with God, appeared 
to make useless the entire ecclesiastic medium- 
ship. The hideous zeal of the University of Paris 
to bring to disrepute the voices and visions of 
Joan of Arc was, for their religious organization 
and its functions, no less necessary, nor less a 
question of self-preservation, than her work 
against the Burgundians and English, in driving 
them off the French soil, for the sake of France. 

Truly the Maid did not know this. She believed 
herself to be as much a daughter of the church 
as a daughter of God, though she was in constant 
antagonism with the officials of the church, her 
mission was wrought out against their protests, 
and she was at last abandoned by their excuses 
and burnt by their verdict. 

But the people loved her too much for her ashes 
to rest in peace. The great, wide religious sys- 
tem could not abide by such partisan conceptions 
of divine interest or such a mongrel and spurious 
alliance of church and state. There was a retrial 
long after she was dead. There was a great vic- 
tory for her. Justice was done to her memory 
and the church repudiated the abomination of her 
condemnation and martyrdom. 

The prosecuting Bishop had succeeded in pro- 



GLIMPSES OF INQUISITION 247 

viding most of the minor charges. Delafontaine 
had wrung from her an allegorical story of the 
sign, but it was Nicole Midy who uncovered a 
sufficient reason for destroying her and her claims, 
if the vice-regency with its ecclesiastical body was 
to function on earth as the holder of the keys of 
heaven. 

The vice-inquisitor, whom the church was soon 
to repudiate, had evidently thought it all out. He 
began the day's process with her by the priestly 
warning that she must in all ways at all times re- 
fer herself to the church and therefore not to any 
visions or voices from God. In other words it was 
now Joan of Arc who must give up claims of 
power with God or the church must do so. 

"Let my answers be seen and examined by the 
clergy," she replied. ''If they tell me there is 
anything in them contrary to the Christian faith 
which Our Lord taught, I will inquire of my coun- 
cil about it and then I wiU tell you what I have 
found by my council; and if there be anything 
against the Christian faith, I will not uphold it, 
for I should be very sorry to offend against the 
faith." 

This certainly disputed the authority of the 
church, as there represented, in matters pertain- 
ing to her conscience with God, and this irrepara- 
ble conflict of authority sealed her doom. Any 
authority or judgment that is not social justice is 
not moral law, and is therefore outlaw intolerable 
to intelligence and God. 



248 JOAN OF ARC 

6. By Whose Authority Believest Thou This? 

She was soon put to the soul-torture of another 
test that brought into conflict her relations to God 
and the Church. She had said that she had put 
on the vestments of a soldier because such had 
been her counsel from God, and she could not 
change back to woman's clothing until she had 
permission from God. Here was a chance for a 
final test against her assurance of salvation, 
through belief in the understanding she had of 
God's will. 

The Church ordered her to put on the simple 
slip of a shepherd girl in Domremy and wear it 
henceforth, or she would be denied the consola- 
tions of the church. In that condition of excom- 
munication she could never reach Paradise. 

The final crisis had come. Should she obey God 
or the Church? It was thus not a political inter- 
est that brought Joan of Arc to the martyrdom 
of the stake, but a fundamental vital doctrine of 
ecclesiasticism as distinct as that of Huss, Sa- 
vonarola, Luther, Calvin or any others of the 
great schism-revolutionists of history. 

Jeanne spoke in all things as innocently as a 
child in reference to anything that might be done 
to her through the verdict of her inquisitors. Her 
trust in God was so perfect that she had no inter- 
est in any fate that man or nature might design 
for her. She was sure of Paradise but she wanted 
to be a faithful daughter of the Church. She 




PIERRE CAUCHON 
The prosecutor in the trial against Joan of Arc. The ef- 
figy upon his tomb in the Cathedral of Lisieux, destroyed 
in the revolution of 1793 



GLIMPSES OF INQUISITION 249 

wanted to comply with all its requirements. It 
had been her cradle and her home. She had never 
known any other moral environment. In that, the 
only way known to her, she begged to be allowed 
to attend mass. 

It had now been more than three months since 
she had heard prayers in a chnrch. She agreed 
to put on the usual woman's dress for the pur- 
poses of church mass, but they purposed to treat 
her only as an erring girl who had run away from 
peasant parents in Domremy ! No more was her 
work for God to be recognized than that! Her* 
soldier's uniform was all that remained to her 
symbolic of her great mission and she would not 
thus dishonor them! 

' ''Would you prefer never to hear mass than to 
put on your woman's dress for always?" 

The question was squarely put now between 
Church and God. 

''I will take that to my council" she said, as 
immovable as any of the great religious martyrs 
of history, ''and when my council has told me 
what to do I will tell you." 

"To hear mass, you must wear your woman's 
dress simply, absolutely and always." 

She plead and prayed, suggesting various ways 
to satisfy the ecclesiastical decision but it could 
not be done. 

She was not called of God, had not led armies 
over obstacles great as any Napoleon, and had 
not been ennobled by the King of France ! These 



250 JOAN OF ARC 

virtuous inquisitors acknowledged her at best to 
be nothing but the runaway daughter of peasants, 
in whose wicked presumptions, ignoring the office 
of the Church, she was worthy only of death ! 

With triumphant malice they pressed the iron 
sword of their creed through her soul and cruci- 
fied this daughter of God as feloniously, this Uni- 
versity of Paris, as did the learned men four- 
teen centuries before, the Son of God. 

7. Making a Public Spectacle of Disobedience 

It was decided to hold a great public meeting 
on May 2, so that the contradiction and conflict of 
her obedience to God and to the Church, as there 
represented, could be brought into clear contrast 
before the people. She had asked what they meant 
by the Church Militant to which they were driving 
her to submit and they had told her that it was the 
Pope and all the organized body of ecclesiastics 
under him. She had promptly replied that she 
was willing to be tried before the Pope. But now 
the people must be shown that this so-called 
"daughter of God" was a disobedient and he- 
retical "daughter of the Church." 

Bishop Cauchon of Beauvais had provided an 
overawing display of sixty-two judges present. 
He told the great public audience that he had 
brought her before them so they could see for 
themselves how she defied the holy Mother 
Church. 



GLIMPSES OF INQUISITION 251 

Joan was then led conspicuously into the hall 
and down the aisle to a prominent seat before her 
judges. Turning to her, this bishop of mercy and 
peace, representing the might of God on earth, ad- 
vised Joan that he had, for the sake of her soul 
and her body, brought her there to listen to the 
great eloquence of the learned doctor of theology, 
Archdeacon Chatillon. 

The Archdeacon held in his hands his written 
sermon on obedience to the Church. Without re- 
ply to Cauchon she bade the learned doctor to pro- 
ceed in the reading of his book. He read his pon- 
derous discussion and then concluded by saying 
that unless she surrendered her soul in obedience 
to the Church, as he had defined, she placed her- 
self in the power of the Church ''to be burnt as a 
heretic. ' ' 

He awaited her reply, and loud and clear she 
said, ''I will not say aught else than I have al- 
ready spoken; and, were I even to see the fire, I 
should say the same." 

Magnificent loyalty to faith in God ! Even Man- 
chon, the clerk writing down her testimony, wrote 
opposite the paragraph these significant words, 
''Superba responsio." 

8. Facing Torture in a Cha/mher of Horrors 

Cauchon now determined to try torture. It 
would be a great thing for the English-Burgundi- 
an cause if Joan could be made publicly to ac- 



252 JOAN OF ARC 

knowledge herself only a peasant girl, bewitched, 
who had finally found Almighty salvation to be 
possible only in the guidance of the University of 
Paris, as the efficient representative of the 
Church. 

Joan, escorted by a dozen of her most notori- 
ous inquisitors, was taken into the dungeon of tor- 
ture. 

The articles of accusation were read to her. 
Then Cauchon said, **You see before you the in- 
struments of torture which are prepared, and by 
them stand the executioners, who are ready to do 
the office at our command. You will be tortured in 
order that you may be led into the way of truth, 
and for the salvation of your body and soul, 
which you by your lies have exposed to so great 
a peril." 

In front of her lay the rack which was slowly 
to tear her limbs asunder. 

This is what the clerk wrote down in the record 
as her words, this girl just entering the age of 
womanhood : 

''Even if you tear me limb from limb, and even 
if you kill me, yet will I not say a word more 
than I have said. And even were I forced in the 
delirium of pain to do so, I should afterward de- 
clare that I had spoken differently only because of 
the torture." 

These hideous minds whose names belong to 
everlasting infamy were uncertain whether or not 
to order the torture, because she might die in it, 



GLIMPSES OF INQUISITION 253 

and Archdeacon Chatillon reminded them that she 
should be saved for the stake, thus needed for the 
edification of the world. 

Bishop Cauchon asked her if her voices had told 
her what was now to happen. 

"I asked them," she replied, ''if I should be 
burnt, and they answered, 'Abide in God and He 
will abide in thee.' " 

The various translations and quotations of this 
reply, like the differences in all other testimonies 
respecting her, fundamentally agree that this won- 
derful woman was wonderful from her immediate 
and unassailable faith in the immanence of God. 
In every instance from the beginning, it was al- 
ways God, her Lord and Savior first, the rights 
of her beloved France next, and only as they were 
of God did she have any belief in the superiority 
of saints, voices, visions, priests, prelates, ecclesi- 
astics or the Church. 

"As to the Church," she often said, "I love it 
and would wish to maintain it with all my power, 
for our Christian faith. ' ' Plainly she believed the 
all-powerful political and militant Church to be no 
more than one of the human instrumentalities to- 
ward helping people to know God. 

If France had rallied around her and she had 
been serving a noble and powerful king, so that 
her great mission could have been fulfilled, un- 
hampered by the folly of courts or ecclesiastics, 
she might have reformed the control that the 
Church militant had established between Man and 



254 JOAN OF ARC 

his Maker, and made unnecessary the bloody ref- 
ormations and religious wars that were to follow 
for the freedom of soul and the liberties of hu- 
manity. 

9. Inspiration That Shall Not Be Subject to the 
Will of Mam 

To make her divine communion a question for 
her enemies to pronounce true or false was im- 
possible, if she were to be true either to herself 
or God. She gave up all hope in man and hence- 
forth her life was not to be considered answerable 
to any but her Lord. 

The final question was put, ''Will you or will 
you not, on what you have said and done, submit 
yourself to the judgment of the Church?" 

She knew now what her answer meant to them 
and never was martyr more true to faith in God. 

Submit to these fiendish minds seeking to ruin 
her faith, to despoil her character, to blast her 
great cause and bring her to a witch's death! 
And call this the Church of God! 

"All my words and works are in the hand of 
God, and I submit myself to him," she firmly re- 
plied. "And I assure you that I would neither do 
nor say anything against the Christian faith by 
our Lord established ; and if the clergy show that 
I have upon me any act or deed contrary to it, I 
will not sustain it, but will thrust it from me." 

The innocence of La Pucelle has been estab- 



GLIMPSES OF INQUISITION 255 

lished by a great tribunal of her Church and she 
has been enrolled in the Calendar of its saints. 
With such brave deeds was she ennobled by her 
King and with such immortal words, said in such 
undying faith, she became the wonderful woman, 
not only of her beloved France, but of all the 
world. 

Wearily the inquisition dragged on. Scores of 
learned men against one lone and dreadfully tor- 
tured girl! Like the teeth of a saw the reitera- 
tions cut hard upon her heart and brain, so tired 
of it all! 

Saturday came and it was again demanded ab- 
ruptly of her if she would submit her words and 
deeds to the Holy Mother Church to determine 
whether they were good or evil. How could such 
a thing be done with these merciless men claiming 
to be the Holy Mother Church! How could she 
do such treason to all her mission for her country 
and her God. 

'*I submit myself to God who sent me," she re- 
plied with schismatic finality, '*to Our Lady, and 
to all the blessed saints in Paradise. Our Lord 
and the Church are one. It seems to me you ought 
not to make any difficulty about it. Why do you 
make a difficulty as if they were not one?" 

They could not answer that. It was the vital 
question that was soon to bring forth Luther, Cal- 
vin and the host of dissenters that were to shatter 
Christendom like glass into a thousand creeds. 

She was rapidly becoming conscious of the ir- 



256 JOAN OF ARC 

reconcilable difference between her relations as 
a daughter of God and a daughter of the Church. 
It was a question of her right to hear her voices 
or the voices of these men. It was not that she 
had been a conquering warrior but that she had 
received her authority elsewhere than from a col- 
lection of partisan wills claiming to be the Church. 
Loyalty and integrity are the essential forms 
required for the values of personal freedom and 
social justice. Human rights are impossible from 
the partial view of any fragment. Individual 
judgments are not trustworthy for decisions to- 
ward any other individual. Each has insufficient 
evidence and such uncertain reasonableness as to 
be wholly unqualified to decide the realities of 
another. Mind and humanity require a total ideal 
from which to estimate morality and decency, or 
from which to realize any fulfillment of patriotism 
or religion. Civilization is not possible from any 
structure of covenants and contracts. Church and 
state are human values only as they express the 
righteousness of a total human system. The in- 
carnation of Eternal Meaning at the close of an- 
cient times was the Son of Man, and the personi- 
fication of that meaning for the Middle Ages was 
"the daughter of God," and we may well believe 
that moral democracy warring against the Teu- 
tonic war, symbolizes for the present age that Al- 
mighty Faith as the total ideal of social meaning 
necessary for moral reasoning, social justice, and 
the salvation of the world. 



CHAPTER XIV 
THE MIGHT OF RIGHT FOR THE SOUL 

1. Counsel from a Traitor in the Cause of Death 

The faith of this wonderful woman stood for 
freedom of conscience and for the immediate pres- 
ence of God in divine salvation. No martyr ever 
went to the stake for a clearer cause than did 
La Pucelle. She deserves for this faith the honor 
of all mankind. This young girl drank of the cup 
with Socrates and Christ. 

Jeanne's fate depended on her reply to the 
question put by Lafontaine. He explained, 
* ' There is a Church Triumphant in which are God, 
His saints, the angels and the souls that are 
saved. There is also the Church Militant, which 
is our Holy Father, the Pope, who is the Vicar 
of God on Earth; the Cardinals, the prelates of 
the church and the clergy, all good Christians and 
Catholics ; and this church in its assembly can not 
err, for it is moved by the Holy Ghost. Will you 
appeal to the Church Militant?" 

Her answer came like her assault upon the Tow- 
ers at Orleans. It was direct. It was unanswer- 
able. It was a great victory. One of the greatest 
in the world. But this time it was not arms 

257 



258 JOAN OF ARC 

against arms, it was faith against will, which is 
the same as the beauty of a rose against the way 
of a wolf. 

''I am come to the King of France, from God," 
she said, ''from the Virgin Mary and all the bless- 
ed saints in Paradise, and from the Church Tri- 
umphant above and by their command. To that 
church I submit all the good deeds I have done 
and shall do. As to replying whether I will sub- 
mit to the Church Militant, I have no further an- 
swer." 

Pierre Maurice, Canon of Eouen, one of the 
most famous learned men in Europe, was called on 
to admonish her, and to make the final demand of 
submission. This final session of the trial was held 
on May 23. 

*'If your King," he said with great unction, 
*'had appointed you to defend a fortress, forbid- 
ding you to let any one enter it, would you not 
refuse to admit whosoever, claiming to come from 
him, that did not present letters and some other 
token? Likewise, when Our Lord Jesus Christ, on 
His ascension into heaven, committed to the 
Blessed Apostle Peter and to his successors the 
government of His Church, He forbade them to 
receive such as claimed to come in His name but 
brought no credentials. So, when you were in 
your King's dominion, if a knight or some other 
owing fealty to him had arisen, saying, *I will 
not obey the King; I will not submit either to 
him or to his officers,' would you not have said, 



THE MIGHT OF BIGHT 259 

'He is a man to be censured T What say yon then 
of yonrself, you who, engendered in Christ's re- 
ligion, having become by baptism the daughter of 
the Church and the bride of Christ, dost now re- 
fuse obedience to the officers of Christ, that is, 
to the prelates of the Church!" 

So, her faith as fulfilled in her wonderful works 
was no credential or evidence or token of being 
from the King or for the King! It had been on 
the side of the party against them and therefore 
could not be of the Church or of God! Such is 
the monstrosity of a party-made mind for the 
salvation of a party-made right of humanity. 

Her reply was the equal of any ever made on 
earth before, and can never be surpassed. This 
nineteen-year-old girl was as much of a martyr 
for the divine right to her faith in God as ever 
strove or died for any cause in the social universe. 

*'What I have always held and said in the trial, 
that will I maintain," she said. "If I were con- 
demned and saw the faggots lighted, and the exe- 
cutioner ready to stir the fire and I in the fire, I 
would say and maintain till I died nought other 
than what I said during the trial. ' ' 

And thus it came to pass, and thus she kept the 
faith! 

2. Condemnation 

The fatal confession of loyalty to God in the 

freedom of her own conscience was written down. 

There on the margin of the record where it still 



^60 JOAN OF ARC 

is to be read, Manchon tlie clerk wrote, as lie had 
done two or three times before, ''Responsio Jo- 
hannae superba." 

And now her story goes into darkness for the 
coming week. The confusion of many witnesses 
and many views that prevailed from the first, that 
has been told of her, has always a background and 
a groundwork from which a reasonable outline, 
though in various ways, may be drawn of her 
faith, her character, her experience and her cause. 
But now comes a week of darkness from the con- 
fusion of irreconcilable versions of what hap- 
pened. By taking her endurance and faith up to 
that time, we can reconstruct something of what 
may, in general terms, have consistently hap- 
pened, but only the critical historian can recon- 
struct, from the mass of testimony, a plausible se- 
quence of events or of reasonably verified condi- 
tions and facts. 

Pierre Cusquel, being a friend of the master- 
mason of the castle, says he obtained permission 
to have a secret look at the great prisoner. He 
testified under oath that she was confined in an 
iron cage, chained into a standing position by the 
neck and wrists and ankles. When she walked she 
was ironed to a block of log, when sleeping she 
was ironed to the bed. She was more than five 
months in this inhuman torture. 

We have no account of how extensively her trial 
was known among the people near or far, but it 
is reasonable to suppose that there were means 



THE MIGHT OF RIGHT 261 

used to carry the news of one so extraordinary 
and so famous. 

The inquisition had completed its labors and 
the cause for condemnation was far from being 
conclusive enough. 

The judges sat around like a pack of wolves. 
They were eager to tear her truth to pieces and 
destroy her life. But Jeanne never sought to 
conciliate any of them. She believed only in truth 
and her God. 

At last a decision was reached. The day of 
Condemnation was set for May 24, 1431. 

3. The Ceremony/ of 'Accusation 

She had sought no counsel from priests or war- 
riors and had asked no help or authority from 
the Church or Court. These necessary values all 
came from God, between her and her Creator 
alone. Therefore she had against her the three 
most powerful incentives of will, those of the war 
commanders, the favorites around the King, and 
the priesthood as the Church Militant of God. 
From the war commanders she had her plans de- 
feated, from the favorites at court she had treach- 
ery and betrayal, and from the Church she had 
treason, torture and death. 

With ponderous ceremony, her accusers 
brought her into a conspicuous public place for 
the formal act of accusation. 

All the testimony was summed up in twelve ar- 



262 JOAN OF ARC 

tides of heresy, all so utterly false that we won- 
der how there could be any civilization having 
such monstrous minds at its head in Church and 
State. 

These were read to her with sonorous tones in 
the hearing of the awe-stricken public, and there 
is some testimony given by her enemies that her 
spirit was broken under the ordeal, but we can 
hardly believe such weak and poorly supported 
evidence that she was any less valiant in battles 
for right as the might of soul, than she was brave 
for right as the might of body. 

The life of one composed of unconquerable 
faith through such a long series of evidently in- 
surmountable difficulties and tasks, we may well 
believe remained consistent to the end. She who 
never wavered in the front of most terrific bat- 
tles, and who could not be overawed in the pres- 
ence of bishops, councils or kings, may have faint- 
ed in the tortures of body, but it is the grossest 
unreason to believe, in the midst of the contra- 
dictory partisan testimony, that she ever failed 
in her faith to her call as the Daughter of God. 

After the dreadful articles of heresy had been 
read, came the long severe act of accusation. She 
must be grilled through all the long course of the 
seventy specific charges brought against her. 

The preliminary accusation charged her at once 
with being sorceress, given to magic arts, invoking 
demons; idolatrous, sacrilegious, malicious, apos- 
tate; a blasphemer of God; scandalous, seditious, 



THE MIGHT OF RIGHT 263 

cruel, indecent, a liar, heretic and a seducer of the 
people. 

De Courcelles read through the long series of 
seventy horrible charges in a clear, loud voice, 
with great emphasis on the worst of his words. 
She stood facing him through all these abomina- 
ble accusations with the dignity of undaunted 
womanhood whose faith and character and cause 
were not in the hands of man or ecclesiastics, or 
Church, but in the unchangeable promise of God. 
She had begun with the mission to deliver her be- 
loved France from the yoke of oppression, and 
it was ending with her being used as the means 
to commit the soul of her country into the des- 
potism of ecclesiastical mastery. 

The whole dreadful thing was done to her but 
she returned no ill word to them. She merely 
denied and let them read on. She knew in whom 
she believed and that He would be with her unto 
the end. 

4. A New Creed for Mankind 

The final question was the fatal one, "Do you 
believe you are subject to the Church?" 

Her fatal answer was, ''Yes, God first served." 

Thus was this woman not a captive of kings 
but of priests. She was the victim of a religious 
creed that was the servant of ambition and of 
hate. She asserted a freedom that was to become 
the light of the world. 

At the close of the ordeal, she was returned to 



264 JOAN OF ARC 

her cell where she fell desperately sick. Her body 
was sore afflicted with the long terrible trial, 
but her soul possessed peace that passeth under- 
standing. Never for any moment had there ever 
been any wavering in her firm hold on God. 

Her guards now mocked her, terrified her and 
tortured her, in more malicious forms than ever 
before. 

Jacques Tiphane, a Paris physician, was sent to 
see her. He found her chained, unclothed upon 
an iron bed. He was one of the worst of the big- 
oted and brutal throng. He abused her, called 
her vile names, and, in consequence, she was 
thrown into a wild fever. Then two other physi- 
cians were sent who bled her profusely and mer- 
cifully brought her very near to death. 

Believing she was about to die she piteously 
begged for the rites of the Church. Then vicious 
Nicole Midy was sent to her with several other 
priests. The visit was not to console her in any 
way but to administer the three monitions given 
to those condemned to be burned at the stake. 

This was done and to her appeal for the con- 
solation of the Church, the Bishop said it was 
impossible for the Church to mediate in any way 
for her unless she submit to the Church. 

"If my body die in prison," she said, *'I hope 
you will let it be buried in holy ground; if not, I 
leave it to God." 

They looked at the girl as she said these things 
and received the impression that she was dying. 



THE MIGHT OF RIGHT 265 

''Jeanne," said one of the priests, ''you have 
asked for yonr Savior. We will promise to give 
you your Savior, if you will submit to the 
Church. ' ' 

"Of that submission," she replied, "I can not 
answer otherwise than I have done. I am a Chris- 
tian, I love God and serve him. ' ' 

And so she put the final seal upon her fate. 

5. The Alleged Abjuration 

The crushing ruin, designed to drive every 
meaning of the Maid out of the minds of men, and 
annihilate all interest and value she might have 
for any one, could be accomplished completely 
only in her admitting that the judgment of the 
Church, then trying her, was perfect in all its con- 
sideration of her affairs. It was a 'necessary vin- 
dication for them as well as a triumph against 
all who might believe in her. Though her body 
and mind had been enfeebled by the long months 
of anguish, she never weakened in her belief and 
the repeated statement that *'God must first be 
served." 

It was a dramatic and spectacular display they 
prepared when Joan should be called on publicly 
to recant and abjure her life, or sentence of burn- 
ing at the stake should be pronounced against 
her. 

The big cemetery of the Abbey Saint-Ouen was 
to be the scene of judgment. Two great scaffolds 



266 JOAN OF ARC 

or elevated platforms were erected near each 
other in the center of the grave-yard. On one 
was seated forty or fifty of the greatest men of 
the time, cardinals, bishops, abbots and assessors, 
with lords and officers of the English Court. On 
the other scaffold was the Archdeacon of Errard 
and by his side Joan of Arc. Around them were 
the prosecutors, the recording secretaries and no- 
taries. The immense grave-yard was filled with 
a mass of people covering the ground and the 
tombs. 

The preacher took for his text the words from 
John 15 :4-6, *' A branch can not bear fruit except 
it abide in the vine. ' ' The Church, even as repre- 
sented there, was the vine, and the sermon ac- 
cordingly was on obedience to the Church. The 
prisoner sitting there was the culprit who claimed 
to have direction for her conduct outside of the 
Church, even from God. 

''Behold the pride of this woman," he cried in 
righteous fervor, with a string of atrocious accu- 
sations against her, bawled forth in the coarsest 
words of defamation. Eaising his voice he ex- 
claimed, ''Great is the pity! Ah, France, thou 
hast been much deceived; thou hast been always 
the most Christian land, and Charles, who calls 
himself King and Governor, has trusted like the 
heretic schismatic that he is, to the words and 
deeds of this base and wanton woman, full of all 
dishonor. It is to thee, Jeanne, I speak to tell 
thee that thy King is a heretic and schismatic." 



THE MIGHT OF RIGHT 267 

Then Jeanne arose, facing Mm with the dignity 
of the freedom seen when she held her banner 
aloft in the front of battle. Now it was again the 
banner of truth for her beloved France. 

''Say what yon like of me,'* she cried loud and 
clear for all to hear, "but say not so of my King. 
He is a good Christian and his trust was not in 
me, but in God. ' ' 

The preacher, ignoring her interruption, went 
on with his abuse to the final words of excom- 
munication and condemnation. 



6. The Sentence of Death 

The awful drag and grind of a hundred strong 
men against this weakened tortured girl was now 
driven far beyond anything known in human en- 
durance. What could not be drawn from her by 
force was now attempted by trickery and falsified 
replies to her questions. No friendly soul had 
been near her for many months. The sting of 
the serpent and the breath of the wolf was in 
every move around her. 

In this last chance, the vicious experts crowded 
around her at the end of the final address of the 
Church to her. ''Let us save you," cried her tor- 
mentors in her ear. "Abjure or be burnt and be 
damned," cried another. The Bishop began to 
read the sentence of death. He was nearly 
through and it would then be too late. 

"Here sign this, quickly, we pity thee," cried 



268 JOAN OF ARC 

the Archdeacon in her ear. There was a great 
uproar among the people. The cry was not ' ' Cru- 
cify Him ! Crucify Him ! ' ' but it was * ' Burn her ! 
Bum the witch of the Armagnacs !" < 

Did she cry, **My God, my God, why hast Thou 
forsaken me ! " as it had been interpreted that her 
Lord had done in the weakness of despair ! None 
know what she said, but they claim that she be- 
gan to repeat the words of recantation they said 
to her. The proof is desperately confused. They 
said she signed a document of abjuration but all 
the testimony shows she could not write. We 
know that she could not read, and we do not know 
what they read to her if she did sign it. Every 
reasonable consistency bears witness that she did 
not fail as she understood it, and that her ene- 
mies, like wolves around a dying lamb, obtained 
falsely all that they got from her in that dread- 
ful hour. 

I Massieu says he offered her a pen as the Arch- 
deacon yelled, *'Sign now, otherwise thou shalt 
end thy life in fire to-day and thy soul in hell for- 
ever," and he said to her, '* Better sign than 
bum." He says she laughed and made a round 
figure at the bottom of the document, saying "I 
can not write." Laurence Callot was one of the 
English secretaries sitting at her side. He says 
that he seized her hand and guided the pen across 
the paper so as to spell out the name, ** Jehanne." 
And that is without doubt all there was to her 
recantation, thus claiming that she was abjuring 



THE MIGHT OF BIGHT 269 

her work, her country and her God. It is of 
course absurd. But it served the purpose of writ- 
ing down a lie to be believed against the invinci- 
ble and immortal God's faith born in the soul of 
a woman. 

As testified to by five clerks, including Jean 
Massieu, who was the one that read it, the re- 
cantation which Joan signed was less in length 
than the Lord's prayer and was so worded that 
she did not understand it as she herself said. 
But a long, vicious document requiring half an 
hour to read was the one used against her. 

7. Back to the Dungeon of Despair 

Pierre Cauchon, Bishop of Bauvais, was now at 
the end of his infamous task. He turned to the 
Cardinal of England and asked what he should 
do. Mitigate the sentence was the reply, and the 
Bishop did so. Instead of reading death at the 
stake, he read, that, for sins against God and His 
Church, ** We condemn you, in our grace and mod- 
eration, to pass the rest of your days in prison on 
the bread of sorrow and the water of anguish, 
there to weep and lament your sins. ' ' i 

A little glimpse of sympathy here appears in 
the black mass. Loiselleur, the one who had been 
the betrayer of her confessional in prison, came 
grinning up to her, offering his congratulations. 
It is recorded that this was the beginning in him 
of great remorse. 



270 JOAN OF ARC 

"Jeanne," he said, *'you have done a good 
day's work and, please God, you have saved your 
soul." 

She turned from him in great indignation and 
cried out to the judges seated opposite to her on 
the other platform, '*Now that you men of the 
Church have condemned me, take me into one of 
the Church prisons. Leave me no longer in the 
prison of the English." 

This was now her right and the duty of the 
Church, indisputably, though it had in truth been 
so from the first. 

Pierre Miger, friar of Longueville, evidently 
desiring to hasten this decision, hurried forward, 
saying, "Where shall she be taken!" At least 
the friar in his sworn testimony says such was 
his intention, but an English Bishop hearing his 
words, turned to Cauchon, saying, "This fellow 
is one who favored her." This accusation proved 
to be as frightful to him as to Peter and he has- 
tened to deny it. 

Many of the mob hearing her and realizing that 
they were not to see her burn, began throwing 
stones at the judges. Several of the judges be- 
gan expressing their opinion to the Bishop of 
Beauvais that she should now be taken to the 
church prison, but he knew that Joan had made 
no recantation. There was yet work for him to 
do. He cut short all talk by an order to the 
guards. 



THE MIGHT OF RIGHT 271 

' ' Take her back to the prison from whence yon 
brought her.'' 

They seized her and carried her back to the dun- 
geon in the castle. So this little sister of the 
saints was thrnst again into the iron cage in care 
of those black-hearted servants of evil who had 
lost all but the forms of men. 

8. Forcing the So-called Relapse into Heresy 

The same afternoon on which she was returned 
to the military prison, the little bunch of inquisi- 
tors, who gloried most in their coarse and brutal 
ways toward her, visited her in prison with some 
feminine clothing. They reported that she was 
duly humble and contrite. They said that they 
had made her take off her soldier's uniform in 
their presence, to make sure it was done, and 
caused her to put on woman's clothing. 

They said she had done this in the hope of be- 
ing taken, to one of the Church prisons, but they 
would not do so. 

Such masters of merciless injustice are not in 
any way believable. But it is known that five of 
the most brutish British troopers were placed in 
charge of her and for two days allowed no one 
but themselves within the prison. Nothing can be 
known of those two days. It is well known that 
hardly a soldier in the English or Burgundian 
army believed that any victory was possible as 
long as the witch of the Armagnacs was alive. 



272 JOAN OF ARC 

She had no rights as woman or warrior for them 
to respect. Brutality was their crnoifixion and 
vulgarity their crown of thorns. 

Trinity Sunday came and she woke hearing the 
bells ringing. She asked the guards to unchain 
her so she could rise. One of them did so, at the 
same time taking away her woman's clothing and 
throwing back to her the soldier's clothing that 
she had been forbidden to wear on pain of death 
at the stake. 

It is said that she plead in anguish with them, 
that she knelt and prayed, but they mocked her 
and abused her, and insulted her till she put on 
the forbidden clothing. Then the doors were 
opened. Witnesses came in crying, "Behold, the 
witch is back in her wickedness." ' 

Lord Warwick came and beheld the dreadful 
sight! Then all Eouen was in great excitement. 
They would soon see the burning of a witch. 
Manchon, the notary, writes of this that the sol- 
diers were so vicious he did not dare go near the 
prisoner, without safe conduct from Lord War- 
wick. A priest, who was one of the committee 
to call at her cell, was so roughly thrust out, back 
into the street, that he was severely wounded, and 
so could account for their violence only on the 
theory that they were bewitched. 

All the great conclave had left Eouen excepting 
the merciless prosecutors who were in the work 
to do her to death. They were there ready to con- 
tinue their work. But many of the priests doubt- 




JOAN OF ARC WITH THE SWORD OF FIERBOIS 
The Statue by Princess Marie of Orleans in the Musee de Versailles 



THE MIGHT OF RIGHT 273 

ed tliat the woman was being given a fair chance 
for her life. Margnerie managed to get some 
woman's clothing to her in the evening, but sure 
enough she refused to take off the clothing in 
which she had fought the battles of her Lord, 
though she knew this meant death at the stake. 
Was this La Pucelle revived, or was all this change 
untrue, as reported by her enemies, and had there 
never been any change in the woman of wonderful 
faith ? Is not her long unimpeachable consistency 
to be trusted rather than the words of the most 
treacherous and merciless fanatics in history! 
The comparison is hardly worthy of considera- 
tion. Joan of Arc was sure of God and sure of a 
home in Paradise. 



9. Those That Kill the Body, 

She had accepted the change from death at the 
stake to imprisonment for life, having nothing but 
**the bread of sorrow and the water of affliction." 
Her consolation was that this would take her from 
the inhuman varlets who lived with her in the iron 
cage. Henceforth she would be done to death by 
Christians and not by beasts. 

But it was not planned by her enemies to be so. 
The University of Paris wanted recantation in 
proof of its religious powers and in defeat for the 
priests supporting the King of France. After 
that, the Earl of Warwick wanted her death, be- 
cause the English soldiers believed battles could 



274 JOAN OF ARC 

not be won, and that their own lives were imper- 
iled so long as the Armagnao witch was left to 
pray for the success of the soldiers under King 
Charles ! But that was no excuse, and more than 
one prominent Englishman had expressed great 
admiration for La Pucelle. Let the Church kill 
her. The infamous henchmen of the English ruler 
had it well planned when' they returned the con- 
demned girl to the remorseless care of the ruffians 
in the lonely cell. 

She had yielded, so they said, to the Church 
in its decision that God required her to put off her 
soldier's clothes for woman's wear. Her own 
faith might yield that much without losing the 
symbolism of her mission for her country and her 
great work in the cause of God. 

On Monday, twenty-eight of her persecutors 
found her in her soldier 's clothes, broken, crushed, 
her body crumpled like the disfigured image of a 
saint. 

De la Pierre, a Dominican Friar, who saw her, 
said, ' * I beheld her weeping, her face covered with 
tears, bruised and outraged, so that I was full of 
pity and compassion." 

We hope for the awful shame of it all that there 
was one who looked upon her with sympathy, but 
we do not know if his compassion was meant for 
her unjust suff'ering or for her sins of heresy. 
He had seen her noble face and large bright eyes 
before and he knew she had suffered at the hands 



THE MIGHT OF RIGHT 275 

of man more than the worst that has been allowed 
in imagination to the devils of hell. 
I The Master of Galilee like the Maid from Dom- 
remy had a faith that was for the salvation of 
the world. Though each in an hour of despair 
might cry out, "My God! My God! Why hast 
Thou forsaken me ! ' ' yet each kept the faith unto 
the end as the will of the Father in heaven. All 
who suffer may think on these things and re- 
member those who suffered more, and yet were 
of unconquerable soul. 

The God of Right is not long mocked by the 
preposterous assumptions of will-made lives. The 
right thing on the right way will always arrive 
at the predestined goal of right. It was so with 
the life-meaning of this wonderful woman. Qui- 
cheret, whose researches were largely the means 
of restoring the lost knowledge of her, prophesied 
a remarkable ideal for the coming womanhood 
when he wrote, "The saint of the Middle Ages, 
whom the Middle Ages rejected, will become the 
saint of the modern world.*' 



CHAPTER XV 

PAYING UNTO WILL THE FINAL PRICE 
OF FAITH 

1. The Terrible Meek 

The woman of unconquerable faith made no 
complaint except to reproach her lords of the 
Church for not placing her in a Church prison 
where she could go to mass, receive her Savior, 
have woman companions and be taken out of 
irons, away from her inhuman guards. 

That twenty-eight men could look upon her, 
eager to see the flames about her, proves only 
what men can be, for there are legions of such ex- 
amples, comparable in their evil only to the mad- 
ness of beasts. 

Faith has never led any one to anything but 
hope and love, will has never led any one to any- 
thing but prejudice and hate. Any one who knows 
these will-made dispositions and the traits of 
them, as being yet the heritage of human condi- 
tions, must pause and readjust his judgment, if 
he believes that the persuasions of peace are 
enough to change any will to the faith that con- 
tains liberty or justice or order or truth for man. 
The beast has never been driven out that way, 

276 



FINAL PRICE OF FAITH 277 

and whatever forms it takes the beast is the same 
now as it was around the iron cell of Joan of 
Arc. 

In a voice weak from unspeakable suffering, 
she said to the clerical wolf -pack around her, even 
as written by her enemies in their records, "I 
would rather do penance once for all (that is, die 
at the stake) than to endure any longer the suffer- 
ing of this prison. I have done nothing against 
God or the faith, in spite of all they have made me 
revoke. What was in the schedule of abjuration, 
I did not understand. I did not intend to revoke 
anything except according to God's good pleas- 
ure." 

Thus all they had made out of her repudiation 
was repudiated, for she had never been false to 
her faith, her country or her God. 

It was enough. All their mad learning and all 
their diabolical cruelties to crush a woman *s faith 
had failed, and the world had a never-dying vision 
of the unconquerable strength that exists in the 
sustaining belief that righteousness of soul is one 
with the Lord of the Universe. 

Pierre Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, now had 
his revenge in the name of divine salvation. He 
had at last conquered the woman who had driven 
him, and his associate betrayers of their coun- 
try, out of his rich holdings in France. He was 
nobly revenged, for she would now die at the 
stake, excommunicated from the Church, with all 



278 JOAN OF ARC 

the dreadful consequences of eternity. His work 
was about to be successfully ended! 

As he came out of the prison \vdth his crowd of 
witnesses, he met the Earl of Warwick. 

"Farewell, farewell!'* he exclaimed proudly. 
"It is done! Be of good cheer. You can dine 
with a good appetite. We have caught her at 
last." 

But it was not done. He did not win the victory 
and can not win it so long as humanity can real- 
ize the difference between the will of the Bishop 
of Beauvais and the faith of Joan of Arc. 

She was true to her divine meaning at the end 
of the third day, when no doubt her cell had be- 
come no less to her than hell. No record of it, 
except in fragments, has been kept. Perhaps 
even the wolves at the feast feared posterity that 
much. No one wants to know. We want to think 
of a higher level for the human will. This much 
we do know that the dark silence of those days 
covers unspeakable anguish and despair, for this 
child of innocence and of God. Faith superior 
to this has never been known on earth. It is the 
divine inheritance of womanhood for the making 
of the human race. 



2. Why They Bated Her unto Death 

In all her life she never had an unkind word 
for any one and in all her unsurpassable suffering 
there is never a word of any complaint against 



FINAL PRICE OF FAITH 279 

any one. Though this might have been an inten- 
tional omission of her enemies, yet it is consist- 
ent with her character. 

Her entire condemnation by the Church cen- 
tered in her refusal to submit to the authority of 
her inquisitors as the militant infallible Church 
to pass on the truth between her and God. Their 
whole mind was set on branding her faith as of 
Satan because it opposed their interests. But she 
defeated them in that thing and they sent her to 
the stake on account of the old Jewish law against 
a woman wearing men's apparel as laid down in 
Deuteronomy 22: 5. This was the ancient Jew- 
ish law used against her: "The women shall not 
wear that which pertaineth to a man . . . for all 
that so do are an abomination unto the Lord their 
God." 

Reason, for the sake of the will to hate, thus 
ignored all her past in order to assert against this 
innocent woman an authority claiming all the 
powers of heaven and earth. 

The ecclesiastical organization hated her be- 
cause all she had done was outside of its control, 
the military organization of her King hated her 
because she did what it could not do, and that 
most of the time against its help and advice. The 
King liked to profit by her success, but he disliked 
the controversy that raged about his ears concern- 
ing the woman. Her enemies were furious at be- 
ing beaten by this mere girl. As their cause was 
right hers was wrong, therefore she was of the 



280 JOAN OF ARC 

devil. At length all were willing for her to be 
rooted out of the memory of human beings. By 
indisputable authority having almighty power, 
this peasant girl of Domremy must be proven a 
liar, a wanton, a witch, a heretic and a child of 
Satan, so that every memory of her would be 
anathema, and to that purpose was concentrated 
all the mightiest means and powers in the world. 

She longed to be considered loyal to the Church. 
It had been the body of her mind through all her 
life. Even as the brief schedule of repudiation 
was being read, she piteously called on Saint Mi- 
chael to help her because she could not understand 
it. 

Even if it was a moment of weakness, she was 
a young girl so afraid of the fire I God help her! 

Even in the midst of it she cried out in repudi- 
ation of the repudiation they were reading. * ' My 
deeds I have done by God's order. I charge no 
one with them. If there be ^ny fault found in 
them, the blame is on me, on me alone." 

Saint Peter thrice denied his Lord, who had 
been a personal companion, and who was then 
a prisoner. He denied his Lord under no con- 
straint and from the mere accusation of an hum- 
ble servant girl. 

Not so this girl of faith, this wonderful woman 
from Domremy. On that rook Christ built his 
church, the rock of faith against which the gates 
of hell shall not prevail, and so, the just shall live 
by faith. 



FINAL PRICE OF FAITH 281 

3. A Vision of Faith 

The lofty purity of her life reveals the possibil- 
ity inherent in every mind for the tie that binds 
together the righteous of the social universe. 

The picture is irresistible. From the vision of 
this wonderful child playing with the village chil- 
dren around the Fairy Tree, we go to the ecstatic 
little girl looking into the great white light and 
listening as the vesper bells ring to the voices 
of her soul whose meaning could come from no' 
beauty of life less than God. Then she pleads 
with coarse governors to lead her to the Eang. 
Youthful knights full of the blazing zeal of aspir- 
ing manhood feel the inspiration of this wonder- 
ful spirit and swear to devote their lives and for- 
tunes to her cause. She stands unafraid before 
courtiers and Church dignitaries in the presence 
of a King and names the wrong which she has 
come to banish in the name of right and God. 
Doubting Doctors of the Law in the name of the 
highest authority available to man question her 
in vain to find a place of weakness in her claim, 
and it can not be done. Then she takes the sav- 
age bands of ruffians, ravaging the country in the 
name of the King, and they become decent men 
worthy of the noblest name of soldiers redeeming 
their native land. They go where her standard 
goes and it strikes the hosts of her country's ene- 
mies like the wrath of God. She stands in the 
great Cathedral at Rheims and sees the Dauphin 



282 JOAN OF ARC 

crowned King of France. Then she is taken cap- 
tive and sold to the powers that in fear and de- 
feat would take their vengeance out on the dam- 
nation and destruction of this one who could save 
others but herself she could not save. And yet 
they were mistaken. They did not know of the 
salvation wherewith she was saved. For long 
months they played with her mind as the tiger cat 
plays with its quarry. They beat upon her nerves 
with every instrument of torture that could be 
devised in treachery or brutality, but they failed, 
showing that all hell can not weaken the soul that 
is stayed on God. The Rock of Ages sustained 
her cross and eternity fixed the crown of life upon 
her head. True enough a cloud came over her 
and hid her from mortal eyes. She was smitten as 
from the hand of fate. She is outcast from all 
the peace of heaven and earth. The flames claim 
her and oblivion receives her ashes in the waters 
of the Seine. But her faith endures like the white 
light over the churchyard of Domremy. The 
voice of its meaning sounds in the music of every 
soul and La Pucelle takes her place among the 
Saints of light whose heroic ideal is the salvation 
and perfection of humanity. 

4. The Darkness of Those Who Hate the Light 

We have glimpses of many characteristic events 
that occurred in the period of their secret work. 
They thought they were making history, even as 



FINAL PRICE OF FAITH 283 

many have thought since then to the present time, 
but, contrary to their reason and will, history was 
making them. Though the merciful Church had 
juggled some kind of a recantation, she insisted 
all the time that she meant, **God first served,*' 
and for that she could not be a Church prisoner 
properly attended by her own sex, but must 
be left to the ruffians of the iron cell in a military 
dungeon! As they found her wearing soldier's 
clothes, after being ordered not to do so, she was 
a relapsed heretic and must be burnt. 

The machinery of the inquisition now moved 
swiftly deathwards. On May 29, forty-two 
judges unanimously decided that she must be 
burnt as a relapsed heretic. They appointed the 
following day for her to be put through the cere- 
mony of abandonment by the Church, which meant 
that, according to law, the military authority, then 
held by the English, must execute the sentence of 
death, as did the Roman soldiers when the Jew- 
ish authorities condemned Christ to be crucified. 
In both cases alike, a foreign military power was 
required to carry out the orders of the Church. 

The great spectacle was prepared suitable to 
so notorious an occasion. The English and Bur- 
gundians were about to be avenged of an enemy 
who had shattered their hold on the Kingdom of 
France, and the ecclesiastical body was about to 
be relieved from one who took orders from God 
rather than from the Church. 

Immense platforms were erected near the stake 



284 JOAN OF ARC 

so that the noble heads of the Church and the 
various secular magistrates could see the final 
penance of their enemy, this nineteen-year-old 
girl, La Pucelle d 'Orleans. 

The helpless mass of people did not want that 
cruel thing done. They were overawed by the 
great learning that was believed to be their 
Church and their salvation, they were enslaved 
under the power of lance and sword, and yet, 
they knelt in their homes, beseeching the saints to 
have mercy on the girl that was to suffer the 
supreme penance on that day. They were on their 
knees in public places wherever the soldiers did 
not threaten them, and there they cried aloud for 
the mercy of the Lord. Beneath the prison walls 
they held lighted candles, weeping and praying 
against the merciless inhumanity of men in high 
places. In the long record of hideous masteries, 
there are on record countless numbers no less 
abominable before all mind, but there are none 
more long drawn out in anguish imposed by the 
leaders of learning and civilization. 

5. The Final Announcement 

Martin the Monk was chosen to announce the 
fate set for her by the judges, as a relapsed here- 
tic. The black company with their foul judgment 
in the name of God came suddenly and silently 
into her cell. The eight or nine months, unparal- 



FINAL PRICE OF FAITH 285 

leled in desperate inhumanity to a girl, were about 
to come to an end. 

She had been expecting, doubtless often pray- 
ing for a swift relief, even such relief as this, that 
her Lord come quickly. But these black-cowled 
men, with the Satan-made brain, came in with 
cruel eyes, and they told her with all the brutal 
blows of deadly words. 

After all La Pucelle was only a simple peasant 
girl, and, when she was told that she was to be 
burnt that day, it struck her with terror and dis- 
may. The youth and the woman in her could 
hardly endure the cruel vision of pain and death. 
She cried out against such pitiless injustice, but 
the monsters of ruthless frightfulness understood 
no meaning but force in mastery or defeat, even 
when the object was only a helpless young girl. 

*'Alas!" she cried in an anguish of weeping, 
"how horribly and cruelly they treat me, that my 
body, which I have never soiled, should be burnt 
to ashes !'* 

But, faith quickly recovered her spirit, or her 
spirit quickly recovered faith, and she cried, once 
more alight with the beauty of heaven in her soul, 
^ ' I thank God ! To-day I shall be in Paradise. ' ' 

The black misery of it all faded away in the 
more precious hope and she became calm. 

At this time, Pierre Morrice came in, and she 
asked, ** Master Pierre, where shall I be to-day 
at evening?" 



286 JOAN OF ARC 

''Hast thou true hope in GodT' he evasively 
asked. 

*'I have,*' she firmly answered, once more lay- 
ing hold fast to her unconquerable faith, *'and, 
Christ helping me, I shall this day be in Para- 
dise." 

Loiseleur, the betrayer of her confessional, en- 
tered as she said this. He is described as being 
nervous and haggard. At that time only his own 
wretched soul knew what a traitor he had been to 
Jeanne, to his Church and his God. 

To ease his own burning conscience, he tried to 
question her in this hour of death to bring out 
more guilt against her, but she looked into his re- 
morseful eyes and gave him answers that with- 
ered all the excuses in his soul. 

Cauchon, the arch-conspirator against her 
honor and her life, now came in. 

Through her tears, the implacable adversary 
loomed before her. 

''Bishop," she cried out, "I die by you." 

"Not so," he replied. "You die because you 
have returned to your iniquities. ' ' 

It appears that the question of what she wore 
had become the greatest of all her crimes. 

"Alas! Alas!" she spoke with pathetic re- 
buke. "If you had put me into the prison of the 
Church, and given me fit and proper keepers, this 
had not happened. I appeal to God against you," 
and somewhere the great God heard. 

The last rites of the Church, after long plead- 



FINAL PRICE OF FAITH 287 

ing, were granted her. A carriage rumbled up to 
the door of her prison. Six hundred horsemen 
holding aloft their lances arrived to escort her to 
her final martyrdom. The great assemblage of 
partisans was already impatient clamoring for the 
show. The platforms were filled with robed 
power in the shape of men, masters of men and 
the representatives of God! 

6. According to Law 

The meaning of all this has remained un- 
changed. The methods change and the victims are 
made desolate in other ways. Freedom is still the 
achievement of order in the rights of man for the 
best ways to live best. 

As we go with the woman of faith to the stake, 
we must remember that her faith had no compro- 
mise with treason to man or God. She believed 
that right is might because order has the intelli- 
gence of all time. She knew that no one can rea- 
son with a conquering will because its right is 
might, having no measure outside of self. 

We may be sure that one so clear-minded as 
La Pucelle had no illusions. There is no record 
that she attempted to reason her inquisitors out 
of their will. Long before this she had advised 
the King that it was useless to reason with the 
Duke of Burgundy or the Commanders of the 
English. Diplomacy with masters is worthless. 
There was only one thing to do to save France 



288 JOAN OF ARC 

and that was to drive the alien enemy out of the 
land by force, and to deprive the home enemies 
of all their profit by defeat. So it is now. The 
world is safe for democracy only as its enemies 
are overpowered, the world is safe for humanity 
only as might can find no way to the spoils of 
conquest, and the world is safe for the individual 
only as order becomes so organized that no one 
dares risk even so much as to gamble with any 
events against the moral system of faith in a 
social world. 

Whenever there remains any means for an in- 
dividual or any group to achieve mastery it will 
do it, and, if frightfulness will help even in the 
least to retain it, ruthless frightfulness will be 
used to its utmost success. The valorous Maid of 
Orleans was for us a revelation of the conflict be- 
tween faith and will whose meaning contains the 
whole story of our human struggle. It is an epic 
of liberty and law. It is a masterpiece of freedom 
and government. There can be no more illustri- 
ous vision than this of individual or group mas- 
tery in conflict with loyalty to the meaning of 
humanity. 

La Pucelle met the hour of great sacrifice with 
all the might of right sustaining her against the 
masters of that day. Soldiers seized her, tore off 
her soldier's clothing and put upon her the long 
white robe customary for criminals who were to 
suffer the penance of fire. On her head was 
placed a white paper miter, not unlike in signifi- 



FINAL PRICE OF FAITH 289 

cance the crown of thorns, fourteen centuries be- 
fore, and on this head-dress was written in large 
letters, '' Heretic, relapsed. Apostate, Idolatress." 

She walked before the Bishops to the carriage 
and was helped to the seat. The word went from 
lip to lip on down among the hosts eager for her 
death. Soon would there come palsy to the arms 
that had waved the banner of victory against the 
foes of France; soon would all swiftness depart 
forever from the feet that had run jubilantly the 
way ordained of God. 

Martin, her last confessor, coming through the 
packed lines of glittering horsemen, mounted the 
carriage to her side, and then Massieu took a 
place on the other side of her. The order to go 
was given, when there was a strange cry and a 
violent commotion in the crowd near her. A man 
with wild disheveled hair reached the carriage, 
climbed up to her and threw himself screaming 
at her feet. 

''Pardon, Jeanne! In the name of God, par- 
don!" 

Loiseleur had done some better than Judas. 
He had cried out for pardon to the God of Faith ! 
Mercy was there and we may hope that he re- 
ceived some reward for being a better man in his 
repentance than any there of whom we have rec- 
ord. But a soldier dragged him shrieking away. 
It is said that the calm-souled victim of his priest- 
ly treachery stretched out her hand toward him 
in token of forgiveness and peace. The Earl of 



290 JOAN OF ABC 

Warwick sent him away from Rouen, no one 
knows where. 

Nicholas de Houppeville, a noted lawyer who 
had refused to have any part in the iniquitous 
proceedings, says, as she came forth from the 
dungeon into the light of day, and looked over th© 
scene before her, he heard her exclaim, * ' Rouen, 
Rouen, is it here that I must die!" He said that 
it was more than he could endure and he went back 
sick of heart and soul to his home. 

The cart was driven on in the midst of the cav- 
alrymen, followed by a horrible rabble of cursing, 
shouting people, through the long narrow streets 
to the open space before the churchyard of the 
Cathedral. There she was led up the steps by 
Cauchon to the seat where she was to listen to the 
sermon of damnation and death. 

7, A Public Vindication of the Mercy of Men 

On a huge tablet set up near the stake, in letters 
written so large that the multitude could all see, 
was the verdict of condemnation by the judges, 
that awful caricature of human intelligence as 
well as of social justice, which declared her to be 
* * a liar, a wanton, a heretic, a blasphemer, a schis- 
matic and apostate." 

On the top of the stake was a huge scroll bear- 
ing in large letters the words : 

"Jehanne, who hath caused herself to be called the Maid, a 
liar, pernicious, deceiver of the people, soothsayer, supersti- 



FINAL PRICE OF FAITH 291 

tious, a blasphemer against God, presumptuous, miscreant, 
boaster, idolatress, cruel, dissolute, an invoker of devils, apos- 
tate, schismatic and heretic." 



Even her Lord at the age of thirty-tliree did not 
bear a worse crown of thorns. He was reviled 
as claiming to be king, she as a daughter of God. 

The people were kept from the elevated plat- 
forms by the soldiers. They climbed upon near-by 
houses and wherever they could find a place to sit 
upon the monuments and tombs of the churchyard. 
One huge platform contained the judges and noted 
personages. Another only a few feet away con- 
tained the preacher, the prisoner, the two record- 
ing clerks, the officers of the inquisition, and the 
prison guard. The stake was about twenty steps 
away, thrusting its gruesome form up through a 
huge pile of wood plentifully sprinkled with pitch 
and rosin. The executioner stood ready with his 
long pole to stir the flames when lighted and with 
a pot of sulphur in his hand to be used in case 
mercy was needed. 

Nicole Midy, the Archbishop of Errard, had 
been very appropriately selected to deliver the 
death-sermon. He chose as his text the twelfth 
chapter of Corinthians, with special reference to 
the twenty-sixth verse, ''If one member suffer, all 
the members suffer with it." 

His famous eloquence was now loudly used to 
declaim against the heretic enemies of man and 
God. Nearing the conclusion, he turned to deliver 



292 JOAN OF ARC 

the final denunciation direct to her against whom 
lie had striven for an hour to inflame the people. 

**I tell you, Joan," he said fiercely, "that your 
King is heretic and schismatic." 

This was an insult to her faith in France that 
she could not endure. The King to her was an 
office more than a man. It was the cause to which 
she had been bom, the heaven-born right of 
France. 

**By my faith, my lord," she cried, *' saving 
your reverence, I do dare say and to swear at the 
risk of my life, that he is the noblest of all Chris- 
tians, loving the faith and the Church." 

''Stop her!" yelled Cauchon, but she had said 
it, and defended with dying breath her loyalty to 
her country as to her God. 

Manohon, the clerk-notary, wrote opposite to 
this reply on the parchment, still preserved in the 
National Library of Paris, the words, ''Responsio 
Mortifera," that is, the response bearing death. 

Then the Archbishop slowly pronounced the for- 
mula of rejection from all rights to the mercy of 
man and God, ''Jeanne, go in Peace ! The Church 
can no longer protect thee." 

"With a gesture of contempt he put her away 
from all hope. The will of man had finished its 
task. 

At this she fell forward upon her knees and be- 
gan praying. Such a prayer it was as establishes 
forever her faith as that of one of the saints of 
God. Her soul poured forth in cries to her Savior 



FINAL PRICE OF FAITH 293 

as one more merciful than these men. She for- 
gave all who had brought her to that hour and 
asked all her enemies everywhere to forgive her 
for all she may have done amiss. She invoked the 
help of her beloved saints and in joy cried out that 
she saw the light. She accepted death as a wel- 
come deliverance. She thanked God that He had 
been her guide in all that she had done that was 
right. Her revelations had never failed her. On 
and on she prayed for half an hour, the sweetest, 
noblest prayer that ever fell from mortal lips. 
The Bishop of Thourenne, mercenary and sordid 
beyond belief, had helped to sell her to this doom, 
but now he was broken Hown, sobbing and praying 
for forgiveness. 

The writer describing the scene says that the 
Cardinal of England was staring out into the sky 
as through a glassy mist, and the Bishop of Beau- 
vais, hardened with inhumanity worse than any 
in all that guilty mob, hid his face in his arms 
upon the table and wiped the tears from his eyes. 

How there could be any heart in them to be 
touched, considering all the cruel work they had 
done may be left as one of the mysteries with 
those who were present and described these 
scenes. It is perhaps most reasonable to suppose 
that it was needful for them to pity her even unto 
tears in order to satisfy their belief that they were 
merciful and pious representatives of God. ^ The 
perverted mind is an inhuman mind, brutal as any 
beast. \ 



294 JOAN OF ARC 

8. The Final Sentence 

In those days of strongly mingled law, super- 
stition and respect for custom, it was so that when 
the Church Militant delivered its victim to the Sec- 
ular Arm, the heretic was taken to the town hall 
and ceremoniously sentenced, but this long-tor- 
tured girl was given over to the mob straight from 
the curse of the Church. 

The hideous hypocrisy of it all is seen in the 
sentence driving her out of the Church, and there- 
fore, according to her life-time belief, into inter- 
minable hell. But her faith surpassed it all. That 
faith in this fiery trial is the most wonderful 
known in all human history. 

The Lord of Beauvais pronounced the sentence. 

*'We declare that thou, Jeanne, art a corrupt 
member, and in order that thou mayst not infect 
the other members, we are resolved to sever thee 
from the unity of the Church, to tear thee from 
its body, and to deliver thee to the secular power. 
And we reject thee, we tear thee out, we abandon 
thee, beseeching this same secular power, that, 
touching death and the mutilation of limbs, it may 
be pleased to moderate its sentence." 

But the Secular Arm made no sentence. She 
passed from the wolves of theological reason to 
the wolves of military might, and the deluded peo- 
ple, born with no such interests, looked upon the 
spectacle as a Holy Show, because they believed 
themselves so incompetent before this superior in- 



FINAL PRICE OF FAITH 295 

telligence, and had none of the faith of the girl 
they were thus hounding to death. Verily, wis- 
dom then had its home only in the minds of babes. 
This child was dying the death of faith in whose 
redeeming power was the salvation of the world. 

She asked for a cross but all seemed too dazed 
to understand. Then an English soldier made one 
from a broken stick and gave it to her. She 
thanked him, kissed it and placed it in her bosom. 
Meanwhile, the clerk of Saint Savior's had run to 
the church and he brought her one with the figure 
of Christ upon it. She took it and held it tightly 
in her arms, now weeping and praying softly to 
herself. 

The ecclesiastics did not intend to be blood- 
guilty ; that is, not to do more than convict her of 
being a heretic. They did not condemn her to the 
stake, by definite assertion, but left that to be done 
officially by the secular magistrates, whose busi- 
ness it was to carry out the decisions of the 
Church in its cases of relapsed heretics. 

As the inquisitor dramatically declaimed his 
tragic words, casting her out of all hope forever 
in earth or heaven, two officers began to ascend 
the steps to take charge of her in the name of the 
executive government. The rabble began to yell, 
' ' To the stake I Away with her to the fire ! ' ' 

Jeanne bowed to the priests and took hold of 
the arms of the two monks attending her. One 
of them says that she paused a moment, looking 
out over the scene, and then said, "Ah, Eouen! 



296 JOAN OF ARC 

Eouen! Wilt thou be my last dwelling place on 
earth.'* 



9. Loyal Faith as the Social Mea/yiing of Humanity 

In her last passion of prayer, her faith had 
passed through hope into love. She forgave her 
enemies and asked their prayers for her soul. 
She knew that it was not the truth within them 
that had wrought this hideous infamy upon her, 
but the lie they had believed and loved to the ex- 
clusion of all that could inspire the mercy of man. 

No higher devotion of disinterested love can be 
exampled anywhere among men. She asked noth- 
ing but that her soul should continue in the care 
of God. That is why the memory of her can not 
fail of its high meaning so long as there is mem- 
ory and mind. 

Vindictiveness had triumphed, vengeance had 
vindicated its theory that might is right. They 
had tortured her soul, falsified her truth, and de- 
stroyed her from all form and figure among the 
living. She was cast into the bottomless pit of 
anathema and oblivion, but alas for them, vin- 
dications can not reach the soul, vengeance can 
not touch the spirit, torture has no power over 
faith, and the destroyers are destroyed in their 
own fatal curse of treason and the untrue. 

The ages have caught the music of her voices, 
the nations are seeing the first rose-dawn of her 
light for a better day, the human mind is feeling 



FINAL PRICE OF FAITH 297 

the infinite power of lier faith, and the first ex- 
ultant notes of a new heaven and a new earth are 
ringing for the sons and daughters of God. The 
faith-keeping world will sometime become the 
home of humanity and there shall be no more of 
the will-made earth. 
/^ Her life is a withering rebuke now as it was 
then to the frivolous and idle encumbering the 
earth with their useless lives. Well could it be 
said of her, * ' She opened her hands to the needy 
and stretched forth her hands to the poor." Such' 
was this gentle girl who was strong beyond the 
strength of the mightiest men ! Such was the un- 
surpassed chivalry of this noblest knight of Chris- 
tendom, the girl who cried like a beaten child at 
the thought of death in the flames, and yet in that 
dreadful hour was so thoughtful as to tell her 
spiritual counselors to leave her lest they be hurt 
in the oncoming flames. The France that can not 
rise to that ideal of womanhood, or any other 
group that can not develop the faith of freedom, 
will suffer with the wretches who were too blind 
to see her celestial soul, and, unless we learn to 
know the meaning she revealed anew along the 
way to the cross, humanity lives on in a faithless, 
hopeless, hate-breeding will-made world. ' 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE TRAGEDY OF FAITH AND THE VIC- 
TORY OF WILL 

1. The Spotless Woman m a World of Shame 

The English Magistry had no opportunity to 
pass sentence upon her in conformity with the de- 
cree of the Church. She was subjected to no proc- 
ess of the law. It was a mob murder. As the two 
monks, with their charge between them, came 
down among the rabble of soldiers and citizens, 
composed of English, Burgundians and all varie- 
ties of renegade French, she was seized as one of 
the ancient Christian martyrs among the beasts 
of prey. With furious cries of rage they dragged 
her to the stake. The priests fled from the scene, 
horror-stricken with the beastly violence. They 
cried out against the brutality being used and they 
were driven away by the mounted lancers. She 
was dragged up the steps on to the pile of wood 
and the executioner bound her to the stake. The 
two monks, who had been at her side, with up- 
raised crosses forced their way through the howl- 
ing pack and climbed up where they could press 
the great emblem against her knees. The soldiers 
closed in around her, rank on rank, as if fearful 

298 



THE VICTORY OF WILL 299 

that this one, whom they feared more than all the 
armies of France, might yet save herself in the 
power with which she had saved others. But like 
her Master of the divine light and faith, this was 
not to be done. 

The two priests who were at her side said that 
her body trembled at the coming agony, bnt her 
lips prayed only for forgiveness to her enemies. 

And now the worst of them appeared before her. 
Why he came, whether from lust of the sight for 
which he had worked for more than a year, or 
whether he hoped she might say some word he 
wanted to hear in her dying anguish, none can 
know. But Pierre Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais, 
came down to the edge of the faggots and stood 
facing her. As the flames sprang up around her, 
she looked out upon the mass of. inhuman faces 
and saw his. 

"Bishop," she said, as she had done twice be- 
fore, "I die by you. If you had put me into the 
hands of the Church, I had never come here!" 

We know that she spoke true and since then one 
of the most worthy names by the side of Judas 
Iscariot is that of Pierre Cauchon, the Bishop of 
Beauvais. 

The two Dominican monks kneeling by her side 
upon the pile of faggots were weeping and pray- 
ing so that they did not see the fire creeping up 
around them. But she saw it and she called to 
them to go down and hold the crucifix high before 
her. 



THE VICTORY OF WILL 301 

2. Self-made Measures of Reason 

The world of authority had now accomplished 
the long, laborious work. The law of the will had 
satisfied itself. According to its estimates the 
body, soul and history of the Maid of Orleans 
were now annihilated. 

I The Cardinal of "Winchester, of whom it was 
said that he never prayed except for the death of 
some enemy, ordered her ashes to be cast into the 
Seine. Thus, as they had cast her soul into eter- 
nal hell, had destroyed her body from the face of 
the earth, and had made her character blacker 
than night, they would annihilate her from the 
values of the world. But the life of faith was 
made more and more alive by every act in their 
infamous work. The meaning of her idea for man- , 
kind was raised above all battles, above all kings, 
above France and given as a divine banner of im- 
mortal honor forever to the growing world. 

Manchon, the recorder of the trial, who was 
near her until her last breath, testified that, ** Un- 
til the last she declared that her voices came from 
God, and had not deceived her." 

Martin, the Dominican monk, who stayed near- 
est to her, says her last words were, ** Behold, my 
voices have not deceived me." Then with a loud 
voice she cried out, "My Savior!" as if He had 
come. Through the aisles of red she saw the gates 
of Paradise. Then there was silence. Her soul 
had returned to God. 



302 JOAN OF ARC 

Then some one gave the command, *'Draw back 
the fire, and show her to the people dead, that 
none may ever say she escaped.'* 

They did so and all stared speechless. Then 
there were shrieks and cries through the multi- 
tude. 

''Unjustly condemned," were the words that 
rolled back and forth with ever increasing volume 
through the great crowd. *'Her soul is with God. 
We have burnt a saint." Evil had overdone its 
work. The enemies of France and the moral law 
had forever horrified the world. 

The executioner came running with the word 
that her heart would not burn, that it remained full 
of blood ! That great heart containing the soul of 
France, of faith and of humanity ! He fell at the 
feet of the two monks, asking if pardon from God 
was possible. Then came an English soldier who 
had hated her so viciously that he must throw a 
burning faggot at her feet to be satisfied. This he 
had done as she uttered her last words. The 
sound of her dying voice went through his brain 
like a sword and he fell to the ground senseless. 
He feared he could never be forgiven, and so went 
out into the night of time insane for what he had 
done to this creature of God. 



3. Some Records of Unblessed Pate 

Manchon used all his clerk's pay during the 
next month to get peace for his soul. 



THE VICTORY OF WILL 303 

Canon Alepee, one of the assessors of the inqui- 
sition, freely said to his friends, * ' God grant that 
my soul may be where the soul of that woman is." 

Jean Tressort, secretary to the King of Eng- 
land, said openly before the officials, as they left 
the scene of martyrdom, **We are lost! We have 
burned a saint!" 

Pierre Cauchon never received the reward he 
sought either from King or Pope. He became 
hated and shunned of all men. Pope Calixtus VII 
excommunicated him, though this infamous perse- 
cutor of La Pucelle was dead. The Pope ordered 
his bones to be burned and the ashes thrown into 
the river Seine. Legend, if not history, consigns 
every one who did not satisfy remorse with re- 
pentance to a degraded death. 

Of all the countless horrors that beastly minds 
have inflicted upon the race of men, this alone, 
considering all it involved, most deserves to rank 
next to the Cross of Calvary as the most abomina- 
ble malevolence in human history. 

In the time of Louis XI, son of Charles VII, 
only two of the Commissioners who had been in 
the council of judges that condemned her, re- 
mained alive. These two were tried, condemned, 
exconununicated and executed for their infamous 
unreason and misuse of the Church against Joan 
of Arc. Verily the blood of the martyr had sancti- 
fied the cause for which she died and in her death 
there was greater victory for her and France 



304 JOAN OF ABC 

than in all the battles that could have been fought 
in her age. 

For a time Cauchon doubtless thought himself 
a great man for what he had done. 

Henry VI, that is, the boy King's Council, in a 
few days sent Cauchon a letter, that seems to us 
now so blasphemous and sacrilegious as to be in- 
credible. The last paragraph is enough, **May 
the Great Shepherd, when He shall appear, deign 
to reward your shepherdlike care with an immor- 
tal crown of glory.*' 

It was only a few years later when the remains 
of this "shepherd-like" man were taken from the 
tomb and burned and his soul consigned to perdi- 
tion by the Church for this very work. So much 
do great minds differ. It is thus that wrong has 
time but right is crowned with eternity. 

4. An Estimate and a Contrast 

De Quincey said, ** Never, from the foundations 
of the earth, was there such a trial, if it were laid 
open in all its beauty of defense, and in all the 
hellishness of attack. Child of France, Shep- 
herdess, peasant girl, trodden under foot by all 
around thee, how I honor thy flashing intellect, 
quick as God's lightning and as true to its mark, 
that ran before France and laggard Europe by 
many a century." 

De Quincey, writing of Cauchon, Bishop of 
Beauvais, thus compares his downy-death bed with 



THE VICTORY OF WILL 305 

that of the stake to which he had chained Joan. 

''When the mortal mists were gathering fast 
upon you two, bishop and shepherd girl — when the 
pavilions of life were closing up their shadow cur- 
tains about you — let us try, through the gigantic 
glooms, to decipher the flying features of your 
separate visions. 

''The shepherd girl, that had delivered France, 
— she, from her dungeon, she, from her duel with 
the fire, as she entered her last dream, saw Dom- 
remy, saw the fountain at Domremy, saw the 
pomp of forests in which her childhood had wan- 
dered. That Easter festival, which men had de- 
nied to her languishing heart — that resurrection 
of spring-time, which the darkness of dungeons 
had intercepted from her, hungering after the glo- 
rious liberty of the woods — these were by God 
given back into her hands, as jewels that had been 
stolen from her by robbers. 

"Bishop of Beauvais! . . . By the fountain of 
Domremy you saw a woman seated, that hid her 
face. But, as you draw near, the woman raises 
her veil from over her wasted features. Would 
Domremy know them again for the features of 
her child! Ah, but Bishop, you know them, you 
know them well ! Oh, Mercy! What a groan that 
was, which the servants waiting outside the 
bishop's dream at his bedside, heard from his la- 
boring heart, as at this moment he turns away 
from the fountain and the woman, to seek rest in 
the forest afar off. . w . In the forests, to which 



306 JOAN OF ARC 

he prays for pity, will lie find respite! What a 
tumult, what a gathering of feet is there! In 
glades where the wild deer should run, armies 
and nations are assembling. . . . There is the 
Bishop of Beauvais, clinging to the shelter of the 
thickets. 

**What building is that which hands so rapid 
are raising? Is it a martyr's scaffold ! Will they 
burn the Child of Domremy a second time ! No ; it 
is a tribunal that rises to the clouds, and the na- 
tions stand around it waiting for a trial. Shall my 
Lord of Beauvais sit again upon the judgment 
seat, and again number the hours for the inno- 
cent! Ah! no : he is the prisoner at the bar. . . . 
My Lord, have you no counsel? 'Counsel I have 
none: in heaven above, nor on earth beneath.' Is 
it indeed come to this! Alas! the time is short, 
the tumult is wondrous, the crowd stretches away 
to infinity, but yet I will search in it for somebody 
to plead your cause : I know of somebody who will 
be your counsel. Ah! Who is this that cometh 
from Domremy? Who is this that cometh in 
bloody coronation robes from Eheims! Who is 
she who cometh with blackened flesh, from walk- 
ing the furnace of Eouen ! This is she, the shep- 
herd girl, counselor that had none for herself, 
whom I choose. Bishop, for yours. It is she that 
will take my Lord's explanations. She it is, 
Bishop, who would plead for you: yes. Bishop, 
she, — ^when heaven and earth are silent!" 



THE VICTORY OF WILL 307 

5. As Heresy Was Defined 

The most unimpeachable testimony ever given 
to any one was given by those who knew La Pu- 
celle not only from childhood but on through to 
her associates in battles and armies, among the 
priests and at the court of the King, but proof 
of her white soul and noble character was not 
wanted by the University of Paris. Those learned 
doctors of the law wanted to justify the judgment 
they had consolidated into the will of King and 
Church. It is even so to this day in every interest 
of life, the partisan eliminates or refuses all evi- 
dence but that which strengthens his judgment as 
his will. That is supreme. It is his God. 

When King Charles VII, in 1450, ordered an in- 
vestigation by impartial attorneys having no in- 
terest to please any one, there was a unanimous 
decision that her trial was grossly illegal and out- 
rageously unchristian. 

As to Joan's submission to the Church, there 
probably never was a more devoted daughter of 
the Church in so far as it represented God and 
not the hate of the University of Paris. The tes- 
timony is not only overwhelming on that question, 
but her entire life is living proof of her religious 
devotion to the religious system into which she 
was born. She was not bom into the world to 
destroy religious system but to be the* greatest 
symbol of all time for the unselfish power of faith 
triumphant over wrong. 



308 JOAN OF ARC 

The Council of Trent in its Catechism defines a 
heretic as *'one who, despising the authority of 
the church, which he has sufficient reason to be- 
lieve is the true Church of Christ, contrary to its 
decision and obstinately adheres to false and im- 
pious opinions." 

La Pucelle was none of that. 

The rehabilitation decree of July 7, 1456, says, 
in condemning the false judgment against her, 
''And because of the question of revelations it is 
most difficult to furnish a certain judgment. Bless- 
ed Paul having on the subject of his own revela- 
tions said that he knew not if they came to him 
in body or in spirit, and having on this point re- 
ferred himself to God." 

She showed to the world forever, that, however 
much wrong may possess the world, nevertheless, 
at the fountain of a child's heart there is always 
the pure water of life, ready for the healing of 
the nations, if it can only be kept from the im- 
purities of the world by faith kept within, and 
protected from without. The child is faith and 
will. Inspiration illuminates the way of faith, and 
experience drives it along the will-way of the 
world. 

6. The Stake and the Cross 

All France, and at last all the world, now be- 
gins to know the meaning of the wonderful woman 
who was born at Domremy and died at Rouen. 
Hers was the faith whose wealth and power have 



THE VICTORY OF WILL 309 

been the glory of the ages, most brilliant perhaps 
in Moses, Socrates, Christ and Paul, but never so 
known in the life of woman. 

The shrinking Domremy girl who blushed at a 
word and was timid before strangers, became 
transformed into the master of armies unafraid 
of anything under God. And, it was no miracle 
except what the miracle of faith can do for every 
one. 

The hideous cruelty practiced upon this girl by 
the learned doctors of the law in the name of God 
gives us to know what the mind of man can be in 
the form of belief made into will. It may be seen 
that their individual will reached as great depths 
of endurance in ghastly infamy as her social faith 
reached celestial heights in human loyalty. 

Upon her head they placed a bishop's miter in 
paper upon which was printed the words, ''Here- 
tic, relapsed, Apostate, Idolatress." 

Surely those Satanic souls saw through the 
flames the cross upon which another martyr died 
with the crown of thorns, and the inscription far 
less in fearful mockery, ''King of the Jews.*' 

Individual-Self embodied in the will of the San- 
hedrim and Social-Self formed in the faith of 
Jesus came at last into deadly conflict, the tem- 
poral with the immortal. They killed Him but His 
faith won the victory over death. So it was with 
the Maid of Orleans. The human self was the 
remorseless will of the University of Paris to 
break this frail form of a girl coming against their 



310 JOAN OF ARC 

interest from the fields of Domremy. But will 
against faith is like an hour in conflict with eter- 
nity. Its dog's day is that of the wolf, the vul- 
ture and snake, but the shining one of faith has 
the stars of glory in her crown. 

Eome, with its world power, was the will that 
was master over the two greatest martyrdoms in 
the world. It was the same deification of will that 
made the Prussian state. Those who exalt the 
will as the greatest thing in man can see what 
a monster they make of persons and nations. 

The will can he strengthened only to increase 
itself for aggression, violence and conquest, but 
faith, the only unconquerable and almighty power 
in the soul of man, is increased only for the hope 
and love of humanity, whose infinite meaning is 
expressed in the kingdom of heaven and the name 
of God. 

7. Those Who Think They Defeat the Moral Law 

Order is slow to come into its own because it 
has so much time to accumulate its system, but 
no one ever lived and no one can ever live able 
to beat the system. 

Rapidly did the feeling of the common people 
permeate the masses far and near in the fleeting 
days following the death of the greatest among 
women. The judges were soon pointed out in the 
streets and reviled as the murderers of a saint. 

In the following month of June, the English 



THE VICTORY OF WILL 311 

Grovernment, endeavoring to justify itself, ad- 
dressed a letter of explanation to the Pope, the 
Emperor ajid all the kings and princes of Chris- 
tendom, another was sent as a manifesto to all the 
prelates, nobles and cities of France and a third 
was a guarantee of sanction to all those engaged 
in the trial. The University of Paris also tried 
to justify its work by writing an official explana- 
tion to the Pope, the Emperor and to the college 
of Cardinals. To make sure that her history was 
written down never to be changed, sermons were 
preached in all the churches of England, Bur- 
gundy and renegade France, describing the mar- 
tyred girl as a demoniac from her birth who had 
been escorted from her home by the *' Enemy of 
Hell, ' ' and that since that time she had been * ' full 
of wrath and bloodthirstiness, a slayer of Chris- 
tian folk." 

But this proves the untruth, or at least the ex- 
ception to the truth, spoken by Napoleon, that, 
** History is a lie well told and adhered to." 

In July the French and Burgundians were 
beaten in their attack to recover Beauvais. Here 
the shepherd boy of Gevandun, who had been put 
up by the court favorites to take La Pucelle's 
place, was captured. He was in Cauchon's juris- 
diction, but the Bishop of Beauvais no longer felt 
his former zeal for heresy trials. He was soon 
glad to turn the weak puppet over to the English. 
It was at the time of King Henry's entry into 
Paris, and the boy in derision led the procession, 



312 JOAN OF ARC 

tied upon a horse. Soon after, without trial, he 
was put into a sack and thrown into the Seine. 

Henry VI was crowned King of France at Notre 
Dame on December 16, 1431. But the triumph 
of English dominion over France was rapidly 
drawing to an end. 

It is recorded that, as the boy King rode by the 
palace of Saint Pol, his grandmother, the hated 
Isabeau of Bavaria, stood at the window. Being 
told who it was, he saluted her and she turned 
away weeping. Gone was the glory in which she 
had come to power and all people despised her for 
her betrayal of France at Troyes. She died Sep- 
tember 29, 1435, on hearing of the Treaty of Ar- 
ras, between the French King and the Burgundi- 
ans, from which came true the dream of the Won- 
derful Woman that Frenchmen should soon be at 
peace, and together drive all foreign dominion 
from the soil of France. 

The Franco-Burgundian army peacefully en- 
tered Paris in April, 1436, and so came to pass 
one of the prophecies from the Voices that "With- 
in seven years the English shall lose a greater 
pledge than before Orleans.'* 

On February 17, 1456, one hundred and one ar- 
ticles enumerating errors and illegalities in the 
trial of La Pucelle were read in the name of the 
noble family Du Lis, formerly known as D'Arc, 
calling for a reversal of the trial at Rouen of the 
Maid. AU yet living who had known and loved 
her now had a chance to throw her white light 



THE VICTORY OF WILL 313 

against the black day on which her enemies had 
defamed her. Rouen, the scene of her martyrdom, 
became the place of her unanimous and unchange- 
able vindication as a daughter of God. 

All of Joan is gone, like her body, into the ashes 
of the past. No relic exists. Gone is every ma- 
terial thing. But the fair face and the sweet voice 
embody a soul of endless faith, suffering every- 
thing possible to suffer in the name of womanhood 
and the right life of mankind. 

The last of the Du Lis family, the rank of no- 
bility having been restricted to the male members, 
died June 29, 1760. He was Columbe Du Lis, 
Canon of Champeaux and prior of Coutras. No 
known descendants of the D 'Arc family now live. 

8. The Great News and the Beginmng of Res- 
toration 

The University of Paris and all the mad minds 
grouped about it had finished what they had hoped 
would demonstrate their mastery over the way of 
life, their supremacy in affairs of the Church, and 
their devotion to the political fortunes of Eng- 
land in its claims to the mastery of France. 

But it could not be concealed that Joan of Arc 
had been thrust out of the Church by the most 
iniquitous farce of religious justice ever known 
and that she had been burned at the stake by force 
of English soldiers without any process of Eng- 
lish law, not to speak of any due process of law. 



314 JOAN OF ARC 

The military, political and ecclesiastical masters 
had made a great show of learned Church dogmas 
through the University of Paris, but the mass of 
human beings, however overawed by authority 
and deceived through ignorance, yet knew that an 
immortal human faith had been crucified, the 
spirit of France had been atrociously defamed, 
and the eternal meaning of woman had been un- 
speakably outraged before all the humanity of 
the world. 

Even the dead stones of human hearts in hope- 
less France once more beat red blood. La Pucelle 
shall not have died in vain. The people would 
not have such masters to rule and reign over them. 
King Charles perceived enough of the feeling of 
the times to take on some courage, but there is lit- 
tle evidence to let us believe that his goodness 
had any gratitude, his peace any human value, or 
his pious faith any interest worthy of man or God. 

One thing he did do, when all France had come 
under his control, on February 15, 1449, eighteen 
years after her death, he ordered Guillaume 
Bouille, a doctor of theology, to collect all the 
documents pertaining to her capture, imprison- 
ment, trial and death. This man proceeded, under 
authority from the King, with a very thorough 
search for all the authentic evidence obtainable, 
and caused the clerks and notaries who had made 
out these documents to make oath as to their genu- 
ineness. 

In 1452, Cardinal d'Estouteville, archbishop of 



THE VICTORY OF WILL 315 

Bouen, was commissioned as the Pope's legatee 
to examine these documents, under legal advice 
from the counselors of the King. Seventeen wit- 
nesses were brought in for personal examination. 
The King, under pressure from the faithful 
French priesthood and the steady insistence of 
the people, urgently supported by the family of 
the martyred girl, now decided upon an appeal to 
the Pope. 

9. Judgment from the Highest Court 

Jeanne's father and eldest brother were dead, 
but the untiring mother was unceasing in her en- 
deavors to obtain justice in the Church for her 
child. The King decided to have her carry the 
appeal to the Pope. 

In 1455 Pope Calixtus III listened to the appeal 
of the mother, examined the documents, and de- 
cided that an injustice had been done which the 
Church could not allow to remain under its sanc- 
tion. All the powers responsible for the death of 
the Maid had used every effort to save their case, 
but in June, 1455, the official examination of the 
trial was ordered. 

It was decreed that the relatives of the Maid 
should be heard first before the Papal council, and 
now, twenty-four years after the death of La Pu- 
celle, her request to have her case before the coun- 
cil of the Pope was being fulfilled. 

Isabella Eomee, mother of La Pucelle, now six- 



316 JOAN OF ARC 

ty-seven years of age, with her two surviving sons, 
presented herself before the court in the Archi- 
episcopal Palace of Paris. With indescribable 
emotion thrilling the court and all the people, this 
wonderful mother told everything she could re- 
member of her child from her birth until the last 
time they had seen her. 

In presenting the appeal it was then necessary 
for the mother to recount how they had wronged 
her daughter. She had to recount the charges and 
tell why they were not so. 

The recording clerks wrote of the scene as one 
of indescribable sorrow. In an excess of anguish 
the aged mother could not proceed and her coun- 
selor was directed to finish the reading. 

The opposition was powerful and the legal dif- 
ficulties to be overcome seemed insurmountable, 
but the demands of the mother would not be ap- 
peased, and the appeal of the Maid from her per- 
secutors to the Pope at last came true. Her life 
was to be reviewed in detail before the highest tri- 
bunal of the Church. It was not now a fragment 
of interest, schismatic as an intrigue of partisan 
wills, that was to look into the justice and truth 
of La Pucelle. The rights of her life were being 
reviewed by the world-wide human interest seek- 
ing to vindicate itself from being the destroyer of 
faith through the wills of men. 



CHAPTER XVII 

CONCLUDING VALUATIONS OF A LIFE 

1. A Thing Is Never Settled Until It Is Settled 

Right 

Oedinances were at last issued commanding all 
who had taken part in the trial of Joan of Arc, or 
their heirs and representatives, to appear at 
Rouen on December 12, at which time testimonies 
and documentary evidence were completed of 
every detail of the trial from many witnesses, in- 
cluding the clerks, notaries, assessors and officers 
of the trial. Pierre Cauchon and the other princi- 
pals were dead but their responsible representa- 
tives were there with all they could supply in 
sworn evidence. 

A second inquiry was held at Orleans, where 
Dunois was among the scores of witnesses to give 
sworn testimony taken down in writing concern- 
ing T a Pucelle d'Orleans. 

A third inquiry at Paris continued the exhaus- 
tive research by having among the sworn wit- 
nesses Jean Pasquerel, who had been her almoner 
and confessor, Louis de Contes who had been her 
page, and the Due d'AleuQon, of the Royal House- 
hold. 

317 



318 JOAN OF ARC 

At the fourth and last inquiry held in Eouen 
was Jean d 'Anion, who had been squire to Jeanne 
during the time she had lived so royally in the 
grace of the King's court. 

One hundred and forty-four depositions were 
taken as the sworn testimony of witnesses, who 
were admonished as they hoped in God or ex- 
pected salvation, to tell only what they of their 
own experience knew to be true. These docu- 
ments still exist in the National Library in Paris. 
With stern impartiality the Pope's commission 
examined every document and every charge, in the 
light of sworn testimony, by the aid of the most 
learned advisers that the Pope could supply, and 
every judge on every clause in every charge de- 
cided there was no ground for the imputation of 
any wrong in the faith or life of Jehanne La Pu- 
celle. They unanimously declared, **the whole 
process is a fallacy, deceit, fraud, iniquity and de- 
ception done and committed ... by Pierre Cau- 
chon, late Bishop of Beauvais, and by the inquisi- 
tor of the faith, pretended and wrongfully or- 
dained to the diocese of Beauvais, and by Master 
Jehan d'Estivet, calling himself proctor of said 
diocese . . . and to the fraud and falsifying of 
the process." 

After a long recital of the exhaustive investiga- 
tion and the extensive discovery of indisputable 
proofs, the weighty document decreeing the inno- 
cence of La Pucelle, continues, ** Considering the 
erroneous judgment pronounced against her, and 



CONCLUDING VALUATIONS 319 

the unreasonable mode of procedure, in every re- 
spect captious, fraudulent and detestable, . . . 
the questions proposed being rather for her dam- 
nation than for salvation, ... in regard to this 
process, we decree and declare in judgment that 
it is necessary to destroy, to tear up, and to cast 
it into the flames." 

Further along in the extended document, they 
say, * ' Considering also that they fraudulently and 
deceitfully drew from her an abjuration and re- 
nunciation, by force and violence, in the presence 
of the executioner, threatening to cause her to be 
publicly and cruelly burnt, by which menaces, and 
the operation of fear, they forced from her a 
schedule of abjuration which Jehanne in no way 
knew or comprehended, ... we break, destroy,^ 
annul and evacuate by all power, force, value and 
virtue, and proclaim and declare the said Jehanne 
... to have in no wise contracted nor acquired 
any stain or slur of infamy . . . being innocent, 
non-culpable, and exempt from crime and sin, 
which was falsely attributed to said La Pucelle." 

After still further setting forth the reasons, it 
was solemnly ordered that proclamation at a cer- 
tain hour should be made in the market place of 
Rouen before all the people, that a sermon should 
be preached on the spot in the cemetery of Saint 
Ouen where she was fraudulently driven from the 
Church, thus reinstating her over that iniquitous 
proceeding; that the next morning a procession 
should be formed, and another sermon should be 



320 JOAN OF ARC 

preached by a venerable doctor in theology on the 
spot '4n the square where La Pucelle was cruelly 
and horribly burnt and suffocated ; and after the 
solemn proceeding, there shall be placed and erect- 
ed a comely crucifix, in perpetual remembrance of 
said departed Pucelle ... as in other parts of 
this kingdom.*' 

First the mother and other relatives, with four- 
teen of the more notable friends of Jeanne, were 
brought into the Council Chamber and the decree 
of innocence and reinstatement was read to them 
together with the unanimous approval of all the 
great names connected with the papal investiga- 
tion. It was said that all the people were in tears 
and that the mother fell faint in the arms of her 
sons from the joy that there was now no stain 
against the name of her beloved daughter. Ver- 
ily, next to the great victory of the flames from 
which the innocent soul of unconquerable faith 
was taken home to her Father's house, was this 
victory over the madness of man for the honor of 
truth, mercy and justice on earth. 

2. The Immortality of Faith That Has Fought the 
Good Fight for Life 

Charles VII, according to his disposition, ac- 
cepted this vindication as being enough, and did 
nothing to punish those guilty of the unpardon- 
able crime, but it is recorded that his son, Louis 
XI, caused two of her judges, yet living, to suffer 



CONCLUDING VALUATIONS 321 

as they had condemned her to suffer. He had the 
bodies of the others taken up, publicly burned and 
the ashes scattered outside the holy ground. 

Writers of that time say that Pierre Cauchon 
died of apoplexy in a barber's chair, *'his name 
loaded with universal hatred and disgrace." 
Nicholas Midi died of leprosy. De Flavy, who 
was accused of closing the gates against La Pu- 
celle, so that she was captured, was strangled to 
death in bed by his wife. Estivet, the proctor, 
was found dead in a foul pit outside the city gates 
and it was believed by suicide. Loiseleur, the re- 
morseful one, dropped dead at prayers in his 
church. The Duke of Bedford died suddenly, if 
not mysteriously, in the Castle at Rouen, where 
the Maid had been endungeoned. Henry VI, King 
of England, for whose cause she was sacrificed, 
was twice dethroned, spent most of his life a pris- 
oner in the Tower of London and was at last mur- 
dered there. 

But it may no longer interest us beyond mere 
curiosity concerning these historical happenings. 
Science and art and every loved tribute of man 
have combined to give posterity a vision in her of 
the noblest faith and character known in the rec- 
ords of the world. Historical critics have analyzed 
and classified every detail of her career with the 
estimates made of her in the voluminous sworn 
testimonies of those who knew her best. 

Statues and paintings, made according to the 
descriptions of her, exist wherever faith and wom- 



322 JOAN OF ARC 

anhood are most reverenced. History and legend, 
religion and morality, romance and drama, find in 
her the supreme elements of profound personal 
interest and noble humanity. 

Apart from all that is claimed as supernatural, 
this murdered girl symbolizes more than any his- 
tory or philosophy can otherwise show, that, even 
as the Son of man, she stood for a loyalty of faith 
that passeth understanding. 

Two years before the death of Jeailne, there 
lived ^ woman poet named Christine de Pisan, 
sixty-f jpven years of age, who wrote a poem of sev- 
eral hiindred stanzas, and that poem still exists, 
in which La Pucelle is compared with Deborah, 
Judith and Queen Esther. 

Shakespeare and Schiller wrote plays about her, 
in the terms of their knowledge or the prejudice 
of the times, Voltaire used the worst that her ene- 
mies had ever said about her in order to revile 
the Church. Eomance, poetry and legend have 
grown enormously over her name. And thus the 
wonderful woman of the wonderful faith still lives 
to strengthen the meaning of life in the world. 

Notwithstanding all that had been done, the lie 
that had been forced into the popular history of 
the times, remained to poison the minds of the 
people for three or four centuries. Shakespeare, 
writing for the public, accepted the popular ver- 
sion of her as a witch in league with the fiends of 
hell. But by the year 1611, as in Speed's history, 
the true understanding began to appear, and by 



CONCLUDING VALUATIONS 823 

the opening of the nineteenth century all writers 
everywhere united in believing her to be one of 
the wonderful women of the world. 

Voltaire, with hatred for Church and all relig- 
ious faith, declared that one set of ecclesiastics at 
the behest of the King of England declared her 
guilty and outside the Church, while another set 
at the behest of the King of France declared her 
innocent and a true daughter of the Church. This 
is utterly untrue because the set who condemned 
her were wholly a revengeful political group un- 
der the pressure of military necessity, and the 
other had no motive, but solely the question of 
righteousness, though the change was direct re- 
flection on the King of France and a very sore, 
self-inflicted rebuke and reversal for many of the 
highest ofiicials of the Church. 

3. Responsibility and Guilt 

The University of Paris was French and Catho- 
lic but it no more represented the Church than it 
represented France. 

When Joan of Arc with swift inspiration one 
day said, **I appeal to the Pope," in that moment 
this fragment of the vine had no more right to 
deliver her to death than any other assemblage of 
priests. 

There was an age in history, when, if a man 
said, *'I am a Roman citizen and I appeal to 
CsBsar," he was no longer to be condemned by any 



324 JOAN OF ARC 

fragmentary court, but must be taken to Rome. 
It was no less so when this cbild of God appealed 
to the body of the Church Militant in the name 
of the Church Triumphant from which she had 
her almighty faith. It was therefore not the Cath- 
olic Church that excommunicated Joan of Arc but 
a conspiracy of learned political brigands who 
were traitors to both France and Catholicism. 

The martyrdom of Christ represents the work 
of legalized authority illegitimately used, but the 
great sacrifice of Joan of Arc unveils to the light 
of ages all that is vicious in the government of 
man. The partisan will is an individual will hav- 
ing no relation to order and is the negation of 
faith in the moral meaning of humanity. 

The guilt of her death was not put by her upon 
the Church. Though all the eloquence and per- 
suasion of mighty men tried to force this down 
upon her, she never for a moment believed it, but 
with her dying breath repeated her accusation to 
the unspeakable Bishop Cauchon, that he had 
brought her to such a death. And it was this 
Cauchon, not La Pucelle, who was the branch of 
the vine that was cast into the fire of eternal re- 
pudiation. Because hers was the faith that in- 
spires man above the beast and gives her the light 
of the divine, she belongs not to Church or coun- 
try but to humanity for all time. 

Joan's patriotism was a noble quality of her 
character, her loyalty to the Church Triumphant 
was an unsurpassable crown of life, but the faith 



CONCLUDING VALUATIONS 325 

that is thus the making of every worthwhile mind 
or soul represents the supreme greatness of her 
meaning to the world. About this vital element of 
her life there is no room or reason for contro- 
versy. It is not a question for critical historians. 
It is the one indisputable vision of her career. 
About her imperishable womanhood there can be 
only reverent silence in appreciation of the su- 
preme and yet simplest of human endowments. 

Dumas has called her *'The Christ of France." 
This is true for the spirit of moral patriotism 
in the sense of her faith in the righteousness of 
God. Being perfect in that, as far as it is possible 
to know, she therefore could not be surpassed. 
But no unbeliever can ever use her name against 
religion, as she lived and died in the name of 
Christ, for the deliverance of her people, and the 
freedom of the soul with its Maker. 

4, The Loyalty of Faith in Material Work 

La Pucelle could easily have had worshipers. 
The credulity and superstition of the times could 
have brought h^r fortunes. She was ennobled and 
could at any time have made a royal marriage. 
She was beset with requests to use the powers of 
divination all the way from charming a disease 
away from children to blessing little gifts for no- 
ble ladies, and deciding for a prince whom to sup- 
port for pope. But she was never a charlatan. 
She could not be seduced from the clear pure faith 



826 JOAN OF ARC 

by anything in the power or wit of man to offer. 

Such was the unimpeachable quality of her 
presence that none of her soldiers, coarse and 
hard as they were, ever felt anything but rever- 
ence for her. One of the captains who had cam- 
paigned with her, in looking back through twenty- 
five years, testified that all she did seemed to him 
more divine than human. The English had beaten 
the French so continuously for so many years that 
they would no longer try to fight the English. 
But, after Joan came among them, all was 
changed. 

'*Two hundred English," wrote one of the Bur- 
gundian chroniclers of that day, **u&ed to chase 
five hundred Frenchmen, but, after her coming, 
two hundred Frenchmen have no trouble in chas- 
ing five hundred Englishmen.'* 

The spirit she breathed into the heart of France 
was not destroyed at her death and it became a 
quality which brought it a responsible place 
among nations. Protestant can rejoice with Cath- 
olic in the sacred fealty of this valiant young life 
to the religious convictions of her home life, for 
she was not fanatic nor schismatic. To that cause 
she was not born. She lived the life to which she 
was born in the name of Faith. 

It is historically true that Jeanne arose in the 
midst of the most hopeless conditions of a hundred 
years * war, wherein France had been reduced to a 
demoralized fragment, and that in four months 
this eighteen-year-old girl defeated the most re- 



CONCLUDING VALUATIONS 327 

nowned generals with her greatly inferior forces, 
and did more in a few weeks for her native land 
than the strongest men had done in several gener- 
ations. But what she inspired in them from her 
inspiration was not the will to do, for they already 
had that, but the miraculous power was the faith 
to do, which had been departed from them for a 
century. 

There is no record that the Jewish Sanhedrin 
ever revised the trial of Jesus and consigned to 
perdition His judges. Whatever the motive as- 
signed, let full honor be given to the Catholic 
Church that it reversed the decision of her mur- 
derers, condemned them as unfaithful, unrepre- 
sentative, unjust and unfit, and cast them out of 
the pale of the Church. 

5. The Commonwealth of Social Truth 

Sometimes the surroundings of the potential 
character has brought forth the wonderful career. 
But this can not be assumed of Joan of Arc. Her 
surroundings may have suggested a faith and a 
cause, but there was everything to suppress such 
a faith and everything to overcome in such a ca- 
reer. Every ingenuity possible in the evidence 
has been used to give the credit for her to the 
Fairies of the Tree, or to the miracles wrought 
through her as an instrument of celestial beings, 
or to her own religious obsessions, or to the scheme 
of priests and politicians, and to many other 



328 JOAN OF ARC 

forms of explanation, but, when search is made, 
there remains nothing but the mystery of power 
in righteous faith, that wrongs flee as a shadow 
before the might of right. 

Nothing in all historical evidence is more cer- 
tain than that Joan arose by her own force of 
mind to do her perilous work in the battle front 
of armies, and to take her more perilous position 
at the right hand of kings. Her greatest fear was 
envious treachery, and then that the world she 
had conquered might conquer her from the faith 
she had given to God. 

The life of this woman is a revelation of crea- 
tive religion, and is more than any will or art of 
creed or war. To write truly of her is not merely 
to exalt a woman but more surely to bring forth 
the meaning of a faith having the creative power 
of God in the soul of man. 

The practical meaning of her superb interest 
and reasonable faith is that she took life as she 
found it and used the means at hand. The mes- 
sage of God was always as powerless as the in- 
dividual messenger unless men received the mes- 
sage and turned its faith into works. Her Lord 
once said, **My Father worketh and I work." 
Also, He said, *'The Father, that dwelleth in me, 
He doeth the works," and further, "Believe me 
for the very works* sake." She often repeated 
as her inmost idea, urging her friends to action, 
''Only as men strive can God reward." Thus the 
wisdom of a child saw beyond science and philoso- 




STATUE OF JOAN OF ARC 
Riverside Drive, New York, by Anna Vaughn Hyatt 



CONCLUDING VALUATIONS 329 

pliy that God's work is in providing the justifica- 
tion of faith in the good work thus done by man. 

William T. Stead, in writing of her, said, ''She 
had all the distinctive notes of Jesus of Nazareth 
. . . regarding the carpenter's son, of course 
merely from His human side. Not merely was her 
life a sacrifice and her death a martyrdom, but her 
story is saturated through with the same miracu- 
lous element." 

But this superb woman of genius displayed no 
genius. She displayed the faith that is expressed 
in works, and that alone is genius, power and di- 
vinity. And we do not have to say faith in what ! 
There is but one faith in the zenith of thought and 
that is faith in God as the soul of the social uni- 
verse. Faith is a higher power. It is conclusively 
shown in her life to be an entity of power which 
was unapproachable and unanswerable to the 
most powerful means of that age. 

Mr. Stead further says, "The story of the Maid 
of Orleans has long been recognized as one of the 
most fascinating and enthralling of all the trage- 
dies of history, not inferior in pathos to any nar- 
rative, sacred or profane, in any literature. . . . 
All that we can say of a certainty is that the Maid 
of Orleans was endued with gifts and graces and 
capacities which were not natural to the Shep- 
herdess of Domremy, nor, indeed, could be ac- 
quired by an unlettered peasant girl, any more 
than the apostles could have attained by aid of 



330 JOAN OF ARC 

the grammar and dictionary the gift of tongues 
which they received at Pentecost.'* 

And yet again, why has not the faith of a child 
in God all the powers that have composed it out of 
the social universe ! Why is not this a basis of 
agreement for the premises of reason suitable to 
all consequences for infidel, protestant or catho- 
lic ! Scientific faith can not be of science if it is 
not comprehensive enough to be moral, and, when 
morality comprehends the truth that makes us 
free, it is the religion of a social universe. 

6. The Social Commonwealth of a Divine Universe 

The life of the wonderful woman has not passed 
away and it will not pass. As she lived in faith 
so she still lives in that kingdom of God. 

Ideas outside of moral faith are things of evil. 
They are working entities existing in signs and 
symbols as evil spirits. Many a God-idea is per- 
verted until it is a more desperate evil than any 
original devil-idga. The God of ideas has his le- 
gions of composing thoughts and they are alive 
only in a kingdom of faith. Their meaning is 
within us and they are original elements of power. 

There is no mysticism in this envisional concep- 
tion of the forces contending for the freedom or 
the mastery of the mind. It explains all the myth- 
ology in orthodox religions as having a conception 
of psychological truth. It brings into compara- 
tive view the democracy of faith and the despot- 



CONCLUDING VALUATIONS 331 

ism of will as ways of self, society, civilization and 
humanity. 

Divine faith as the maker of mind provides a 
righteous way in some sacred cause for humanity. 
It may be the restoration of an enslaved people, 
as was that of Moses, or of the discovery of truth, 
as was that of Socrates, or of the salvation of the 
world, as was that of Christ. It may be for the 
freedom of the people as was ancient Athens, for 
religious liberty as in the struggle of Holland, or 
for the safety of the individual as in the meaning 
of America. 

/'<As Christ gave His life for the humanity of 
the world so Joan of Arc gave hers for the human- 
ity of nations. The faith of both in the name of 
God was one, and it was a faith that triumphed 
over death. The shepherd girl from the hills of 
Lorraine has no counterpart since the boy arose 
from the bulrushes of the Nile to lead captives to 
the freedom of the promised land. She was his 
successor in the problem of righteousness among 
groups and nations. She was one who wanted to 
clean the harvest fields of a people from the ver- 
min of conquest and to have a region of order 
safe for childhood, parentage and the peace of 
those grown old in the work of the world. 

Joan of Arc in the narrower vision is the in- 
carnation and symbol of patriotism. But no ideal 
of patriotism could give her such unconquerable 
faith. She is an unsurpassable example of devo- 
tion to the Church which gave her all she knew 



332 JOAN OF ARC 

of the reign of God on earth, but the Church could 
not give her the glorious cause in which she died, 
because, in that respect it was priest against 
priest and Church authority against Church au- 
thority. The problem of reconciling the attitude 
of the bishops had no interest for her, and she 
scorned the finical wisdom of the clerks. There- 
fore, it was not Church nor Country that made 
Joan of Arc. It was the revolt of a superior soul 
against wrong, the solution of which was to drive 
the wrong-doers out of her country, and to unite 
her people under a consecrated King, who should 
be true to the King of Heaven to whom belonged 
the people of France. 

7. The Face and Form of Her 

The face and form given in pictures and statues 
of Joan of Arc may not be exact in detail, but the 
descriptions of her were so vivid and abundant 
that the statue of her by Princess Marie, daughter 
of Louis Philippe, can not be much different from 
the real woman. 

The fate of this wonderful woman has been al- 
most as strange in literature and history as in her 
career. Chapelain wrote in high praise of her 
soon after her death, but his high-sounding verses 
have all perished excepting a few lines quoted by 
Boileau. Southey, the Englishman, wrote with the 
worship of youth for her heroic spirit, and Vol- 
taire the Frenchman used her as a wench with 



CONCLUDING VALUATIONS 333 

whom to lampoon the Church. So has her life 
served almost every purpose where any one need- 
ed an illustrious example. 

A statue to her memory was raised on the 
bridge at Orleans soon after her death, but it per- 
ished in the wars that followed. All we know of it 
is from the preservation of the inscription on it 
which said that it was raised by the Matrons and 
Maids of Orleans. The earliest engraving of her 
now in existence was made in 1606, but the com- 
monly accepted appearance of her is the statue 
made by Princess Marie of Wtirtemburg, now in 
the art galleries of Versailles. 

Some unknown German priest, writing in 1793 
on the spot where she was burnt, wrote a poem 
from which the following stanzas are selected : 

"It was no fabling story, 
That strengthening glimpse of glory, 
'Twas Horeb's sacred spark! 
Christ did thy banner brighten, 
And Christ thy pangs will lighten, 
Jeanne! thou Maid of Arc. 
Here naked they exposed thee, 
/ Here martyr flames enclosed thee. 

Thou holy heroine ! 
Here angels waved their boughs 
Of palms around your brows 
Thou suffer serene!" 

Jeanne d'Arc lives before us as a vision of his- 
tory, legend, miracle, mythology and mystery. 
She is one of the morning stars awakening the 



334 JOAN OF ARC 

world from the midnight of the past. Humanity 
has its heavens, that, far more than the skies, de- 
clare the glory of God. She has enlarged our un- 
derstanding of the faith-ideal and immortalized 
the womanly beauty of our human dream. 

Lives gather meaning like ideas. Their inter- 
est and influence can not be held to the historical 
portrait or to the changeless feature of the statue. 
It is safe to say that no life is ever represented, 
and that it never can be represented, as it is. Life 
is what It is to us. Life exists only as its meaning 
is our truth. 

The details of exactness worked out in her story 
would lose the meaning, even as a reproduction of 
the elemental sounds in a word would convey no 
idea. Being meaningless, it would be worthless 
and untrue. As we desire the golden coin to be 
gold, and the stamp of coinage to be legitimate, so 
the inspiring vision must have a total meaning 
harmonious with the eternal way. Such is faith 
as the complete sufficiency for life, and in such 
faith, no less than in that of La Pucelle, is golden 
coin and legitimate coinage. Her voices continue 
forever as soul-expanding notes in the music of 
humanity. 

Divine faith, wherever it has appeared on earth, 
has strangely the same history. The parallel 
stories are fundamentally alike enough to be of 
the same source, the same coinage and the same 
gold. The archbishops with this one wonderful 
woman were much of the same kind with the Jew- 



CONCLUDING VALUATIONS 335 

ish doctors and the One Wonderful Man. She in- 
deed drank of the cup which her Lord drank and 
was baptized with the baptism wherewith he was 
baptized, this girl of nineteen, who had never 
looked into the eyes of the Son of Man, and whom 
she never denied even unto the dawn of her great 
day. Lives thus sacrificed upon the way are given 
for the healing of nations and for the making of 
the world. 

8. Beatification 

In 1869, Dupanloup, Bishop of Orleans, ad- 
dressed the Holy See on the cause of the Beatifica- 
tion of Joan of Arc ; December 13, 1908, the proc- 
ess began in declaring her sainthood, and, on 
April 11, 1909, Pope Piux X, the required process 
being completed, published the decree placing her 
name among the Blessed in the calendar of Saints, 
as she already was in the hearts of the world, and 
the meaning of the divine universe. 

She had written her life in the constitutions of 
society, and faith had set her star of hope and 
love in the constellations of light. But neither the 
mystic nor the ideal, inspiring even for the finest 
worth of humanity, can ever explain or formulate 
her career of practical value as available to the 
individual soul. Joan of Arc revealed the power 
of inspiration and faith against theory and will. 
In recent times, the two regions of life are still 
the same for private interests, each distinguish- 
able from the other as contrasts, ever visible be- 



336 JOAN OF ARC 

tween social sympathy and individual mastery; 
but, for public world interests, tbe struggle still 
continues to achieve through peace and war a 
world of social democracy as against a world of 
sovereign efficient states. 

In the desperate days of the European War, 
when the ruthless invader was crushing his heel 
into the heart of France, there was many a prayer 
to the Daughter of God, invoking her to come 
forth again with her ancient power for the rights 
of her people. Benjamin de Casseres wrote a 
poem of which the following was the refrain: 

"Sister on earth to the Man of Tears, 
Madonna of France who knew no fears, 
Arise with thy warriors out of the years! — > 
We summon thee back to France !" 

To this summons Conde Fallen replied: 

"The soul of France has wakened and Joan leads the wayj 
The soul of France is marching in honor's white array, 
The soul of France is voicing all the glories of her past, 
The soul of France is chanting to the music of the blast. 
The soul of France is singing to the thunder of the gale. 
And Joan leads her legions in the lightenings of her mail." 

At the beatification of La Pucelle as a saint in 
the calendar of the Church, five hundred years 
after the childhood of the Shepherd Girl, many 
thousands of pilgrims from all parts of the world 
were crowded before the high altars of Saint 
Peter at the Vatican. There were present all the 



CONCLUDING VALUATIONS 337 

high dignitaries of Church and State. The entire 
Church Militant in its highest authority was there 
to do her the greatest honor possible to religious 
order in whose name she had suffered the most 
desperate and ignoble martyrdom. The ceremo- 
nies required the services of fifteen cardinals and 
seventy archbishops. If the Bishop of Beauvais 
and the learned doctors of law from the faculty 
of the University of Paris could have seen that 
gorgeous vision of religious sanction upon one 
whom they so dreadfully defamed, what a wither- 
ing blast it would have been upon their learning, 
their piety and their law. It is a brilliant illus- 
tration of the incompetency of mind, a withering 
repudiation of efficiency in reasoning when devot- 
ed to will and limited to self. 

Upon the banner representing that of Joan of 
Arc were the significant words that compose her 
career and give meaning to her life. Those words 
were ''Faith and Country." If we can under- 
stand country to mean a home safe for a child and 
for the faith of a loyal woman, then "Faith and 
Country" define the sainthood of Joan of Arc. 

Frederick "Welty, writing of her Beatification, 
has this verse : 

"Domremy ! Oh Domremy ! how the haunted woodland sighs, 
For the falling of her footsteps, for the laughing of her eyes ! 
Domremy! Oh Domremy! Aei-oss the meadow dews, 
She is coming, she is coming, by the turning of the Meuse. 
They've crowned her at the Vatican, and named her Queen of 
France, 



338 JOAN OF ARC 

And bade her rule from Vosges and recall each errant lance. 
She is coming, she is coming, in the rising of the sun, 
To rule, to rule in Vosges 'til the years of God are run." 

9. Realising Some Conclusions 

Joan of Arc had no strength or character pecu- 
liar to herself alone, nor given to herself alone, 
or that is denied in any way to others among the 
sons and daughters of men. To see her as one 
unique in heredity, or a single example of favorit- 
ism from the divine, is unreasonable and alike ab- 
surd to the law and order of life. Her faith is 
available to all. To be a respecter of persons is 
not known in human history either for Nature or 
God. 

Two interests available to any one made her 
one of the supreme benefactors of humanity and 
developed in her the unconquerable character un- 
surpassable in the history of mankind. Over and 
over again she tells us herself what that immortal 
meaning was to her. The first great interest noted 
by her clearly identified her as one in tune with 
the eternal moral law. It was this moral truth, 
as she said, that had ''Great Pity for France." 
This means that the child of Domremy felt for 
her people what the Man of Sorrows felt for His 
world. Then there was the second interest, which 
was merely the ultimate meaning of the first, she 
had equally great faith in the God of life, that ful- 
fillment is provided for all who are striving in 
that divine order for fulfillment. The intuition of 



CONCLUDING VALUATIONS 339 

the child was no less irresistible than the conclu- 
sions of all logic: God and Nature were together 
an almighty moral law that would defeat wrong 
and sustain right wherever the people strove to- 
gether in harmony with nature, law and God. 

Socrates may be reckoned as the first supreme 
individual example of faith in eternal order pay- 
ing the tragedy of humanity to the reasoning of 
collective will. His vision was the light of the 
world until its righteousness became one with the 
divine message that gathered all the meaning of 
mankind into the Tragedy of the Cross, where the 
infinite order of faith again paid the whole human 
penalty to the organization of will. Over and 
over again, daily, if not hourly, since human will 
began, and until human will as such shall end, the 
same tragedy, in all its infinite variety of torture 
and ruin, continues to be repeated in every life in 
every community and group, and on and on it will 
be so until we know how to eliminate the liar and 
traitor and assassin whose will is substituted for 
social order and the moral law. 

Among the countless martyrs to the rights of 
life, Joan of Arc lived and died for a more com- 
prehensive and practical vision of social interests, 
against the mastery of a more conspicuous autoc- 
racy of will by far, than is reasonable to suppose 
that history ever had, or can ever have again in 
the course of the world. Moreover, her prophe- 
cies come true and her work for France was not 
in vain. The hundred years' war came to an end 



340 JOAN OF ARC 

and peace was restored, as La Puoelle had pre- 
dicted, within seven years, though Calais was held 
until January, 1558, when the foe was thrust out 
of France "except those who died there." 

We may well believe that Paul, in this fulfill- 
ment of her work, would surely share with her the 
full measure of his triumphant soul, as he said, 
"I have fought the good fight, I have finished my 
course, I have kept the faith, henceforth there is 
laid up for me a crown of righteousness. ' ' 

Sterling said, at a time when it was regarded 
as good history to believe her evil beyond all other 
women : 

"High among the dead, who give 
Better life to those who live, 
See where shines the peasant Maid." 

The most amazing mission and message of faith 
and fulfillment anywhere on record is known to us 
in meaning as far more than history can reveal in 
the life of Joan of Arc. The war-lords trod across 
her humble fields and withered the happiness and 
rights of human bemgs, as grass in the way of fire. 
The record is not so desperate and atrocious as 
seen in our scientific war of the present Christian 
age, but a religious child believing in God, knew 
there was somewhere strength to stay such un- 
speakable wrong. She had unconquerable and un- 
faltering faith that God would give his strength 
to any one laboring or fighting to overthrow such 
despotism,. She was not awe-struck before the 
pomp of Courts and Kings, because she served an 



CONCLUDING VALUATIONS 341 

infinitely greater Lord, even tlie Lord of lords, the 
King of kings, no less than the King of heaven, 
nay more, she was herself the daughter of God. 

Christ named one sin as unpardonable, and that 
was probably where a saintly thing is named as 
coming from Satan, or where a good thing is used 
as being evil. The curse of woe is upon those who 
believe a lie and love it. Human history has no 
example anywhere else in which such extended 
high-power efforts were made to f alisfy the record 
of a life, and write down one of the noblest of 
characters as an enemy of Man and God. But 
it all failed and very rapidly failed. 

The divine reality of faith that makes possible 
the process of social civilization is the same, yes- 
terday, to-day and forever, for all mankind. The 
learned of many lands have tried to explain the 
dreaming girl of Domremy in other ways, outside 
the power of faith, but none of it explains. She 
grew up from the desolation of contending pas- 
sions into the most treasonable and corrupt of all 
ages, where faith was known only as a truce be- 
tween debaucheries, and honor was a commodity 
of any market. But her white life would have 
none of that way. 

**I have great pity for your soul," she said to 
her enemies, even as she heard the voice of God, 
in harmony with her feelings, saying, **I have 
great pity for France." 

Great pity for the soul of those who are wrong 
is the God-like interest of all divine faith. 



342 JOAN OF ARC 

* * Father, forgive them ! They know not what they 
do ! ' * can be said only from the far-seeing vision 
of the faith that passeth understanding, faith in 
the certainty of a moral universe. 

Her final and fatal problem was in being forced 
to decide for the trnth of the immediate God or 
the immediate Chnrch, and she never hesitated for 
an instant to live and die for the immediate God. 
She named the eternal freedom of conscience and 
the sonl long before the great reformers were 
born, as she refused to allow any mastery of the 
Church to come between her and her God. Inspi- 
ration immediate for her soul was the source of 
faith which all the most learned, powerful and un- 
merciful could not touch or befoul, and which all 
the suffering possible for a girl could not cause to 
lessen or fail. None of the great religious reform- 
ers ever replied more boldly, directly or conclu- 
sively to their inquisitors than did this girl when 
she said to the imposing conclave from the Uni- 
versity of Paris, ** There is more in the Book of 
Our Lord than in all yours." 

Anatole France, in his anti-religious history of 
her, says, ''This child's utterance sapped the very 
foundation of the Church, ' ' meaning the interfer- 
ence of ecclesiastics between the soul and the God 
of Life. When the University professors of Poi- 
tiers asked her for a sign of her divine calling, she 
named victory as the sign, and it cost them six 
weeks of discussion and investigation before they 
could decide that it was their business to aid in 



CONCLUDING VALUATIONS sm 

bringing this sign to pass by recommending her to 
the King. 

She added new luster to the meaning given by 
her to the independence of the soul, after she had 
achieved the victory sign at Orleans. Bishop 
Pasquerel said to her as he took into considera- 
tion her words and deeds, ' ' Such history as yours 
there hath never been before in the world. Nought 
like it can be read in any book." As to the doc- 
tors of the law at Poitiers and at Paris, she re- 
plied to him, ^'My Lord hath a book in which no 
clerk, however perfect his learning, has ever 
read." 

And so we are slowly learning her truth, that, 
as the child believes in the goodness of mankind, 
so mind must forever believe, in the goodness of 
the Maker of mankind. The infinite system in 
which we live and move and have our being, out 
of which we come and into which we go, is the 
truth which shall make us free, the faith that 
makes us free, and the only way under heaven 
whereby there can be peace on earth or salvation 
for the nations of the world. 

Humanity requires social justice, but the neces- 
sary righteousness is not possible in any compact 
of wills, however carefully they may be cove- 
nanted to manage, without respect to persons, the 
various abilities to get and to monopolize. The 
human struggle to develop a civilization freed 
from the control of individual greed, through the 
management of wills by the letter of the law, is 



SU JOAN OF ARC 

historically demonstrated to be impossible. As 
the right to life essentially requires the best ob- 
tainable means for life, it follows that any dis- 
loyalty to either right is a fundamental crime 
against the inalienable right of man. But history 
and reason have likewise demonstrated the impos- 
sibility of any unaided individual mind ever be- 
coming wise enough to provide what is best for the 
right life. The social wisdom necessary for the 
way of life and the rights of man is the refined 
commonwealth of the ages. Many persons be- 
lieved in Christ, but their individual understand- 
ing was too feeble to be faithful when they saw the 
will by which they measured him, reduced to noth- 
ingness under the will of his enemies. Many be- 
lieved in Joan of Arc, but their individual inter- 
pretations collapsed when they saw her will pow- 
erless under the will of church and state. A civili- 
zation of wills has studded the sky of mind with 
such fantastic notions of personal justice that we 
now know a system of wills has no meaning or 
consequence, but suffering, sacrifice and war. 

Christ was a revelation of life and not the doc- 
trine of a will. Joan of Arc was a revelation of 
Christian life. She was a vision and a message 
of the unconquerable Christian soul. This bright 
and morning star of all the Christian centuries, 
this fairest among ten thousand, this altogether 
lovely soul of womanhood, drank the cup and won 
for all time the victory of her Lord, the Divine 
Master of the City to Come. 




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